The Fated Sky is the title of a historical novel for young adults by English

English people

The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...

 author Henrietta Branford

Henrietta Branford

Henrietta Branford born in India, she was a fiction writer who wrote many novels including Fire, Bed and Bone...

, first published in Great Britain

Great Britain

Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...

 in 1996 by Hodder Children's Books

Hodder Headline

Headline Publishing Group is a British publishing company. It was founded in 1986 by Tim Hely Hutchinson, and acquired Hodder & Stoughton in 1992 to form Hodder Headline. It was acquired by Hachette Livre, from the WHSmith Group PLC, in 2005....

. Set in Norway

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

 and Iceland

Iceland

Iceland , described as the Republic of Iceland, is a Nordic and European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Iceland also refers to the main island of the country, which contains almost all the population and almost all the land area. The country has a population...

 during the Viking

Viking

The term Viking is customarily used to refer to the Norse explorers, warriors, merchants, and pirates who raided, traded, explored and settled in wide areas of Europe, Asia and the North Atlantic islands from the late 8th to the mid-11th century.These Norsemen used their famed longships to...

 period, it depicts the stirring but bleak existence of Dark Age Europeans at a time of insecurity and constant threat from raiders. The story follows a young woman called Ran from the time she loses her mother in a wolf attack, and a subsequent attempt to kill her as a human sacrifice

Human sacrifice

Human sacrifice is the act of killing one or more human beings as part of a religious ritual . Its typology closely parallels the various practices of ritual slaughter of animals and of religious sacrifice in general. Human sacrifice has been practised in various cultures throughout history...

, to her escape with a blind harp

Harp

The harp is a multi-stringed instrument which has the plane of its strings positioned perpendicularly to the soundboard. Organologically, it is in the general category of chordophones and has its own sub category . All harps have a neck, resonator and strings...

er, Toki, to a new life in Iceland. Even there however the threat of sudden violence hangs over small and isolated farming communities. The book does not dwell on bloodshed but is honest about the hardship, unpredictability and cruelty of the period, showing even sympathetic central characters as not immune to painful death. Moral choices are also at times difficult.

The book was noted as one of the ten best "romance" novels for young adults in 2000.