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Cover of Mercies

How long does it take to read Mercies?

Kiran Millwood Hargrave

Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave takes about 5 hours 34 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.

About 5 hours 34 minutes

A weekend read

First published 2020. 304 pages, about 83,600 words.

12 days at 30 minutes a day

Estimate based on 275 words per page.

At other speeds

Slow, 150 words a minute 9 hours 17 minutes
Average, 250 words a minute 5 hours 34 minutes
Fast, 400 words a minute 3 hours 29 minutes

The page count is the median across 6 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.

About the book

When the women take over, is it sorcery or power? Finnmark, Norway, 1617. Twenty-year-old Maren Magnusdatter stands on the craggy coast, watching the skies break into a sudden and reckless storm. All forty of the village’s men were at sea, including Maren’s father and brother, and all forty are drowned in the otherworldly disaster. For the women left behind, survival means defying the strict rules of the island. They fish, hunt, and butcher reindeer—which they never did while the men were alive. But the foundation of this new feminine frontier begins to crack with the arrival of Absalom Cornet, a man sent from Scotland to root out alleged witchcraft. Cornet brings with him the threat of danger—and a pretty, young Norwegian wife named Ursa. As Maren and Ursa are drawn to one another in ways that surprise them both, the island begins to close in on them, with Absalom's iron rule threatening Vardø's very existence.

Subjects: Fiction, historical, Norway, fiction, Fiction, historical, general, Trials (Witchcraft), Fiction, Witch hunting

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