Yearwood

Undeservedly obscure fantasy. It's not your typical bastard-son-looking-for-unknown-father story because of Hazel's beautiful, brooding prose and the unusual air of fateful foreboding which is carried off with skill. Also a good story. The first page should have you riveted unless you have no imagination. The Kell are cool and creepy and the ending is very very good (I'll say no more!). Read the whole series, but start here.

I liked the pacing, the language, the scenery, the characterizations, the developing mystery of exactly what this is a story about, and I don't know what all else. Oddly, though, I thought that some of those things, in combination, made this a bit more tedious than I like, and somewhat more elliptical than seemed necessary in the presentation and development of critical events and characters. I really wanted to like this immensely, and it had many of the things that cause me to do so; but somehow they didn't quite gel as I would have wished. I would say I recognize this as a fine work of fantasy, but I don't quite feel it.

Scandinavian/Celtic myth-influenced tale.
The trilogy reminded me rather a lot of A.A. Attanasio's Arthurian fiction - a comparison I haven't seen elsewhere, but that I nonetheless feel is rather apt.
They take an unusual view of myth, playing with time and reality...
The first book, Yearwood, with its giants, heroes and witches could almost be straight from the Mabinogion. The second, Undersea, is more experimental, playing with multitudes of identities and the concepts related to how mythological figures and gods can be conflated over time.
The third, Winterking, is strikingly different - but, I thought, more entertaining - moving the characters and concepts into an alternate American of indeterminate (but more modern) time. An immortal show more man conspires to keep him immortality secret, while pursued by the keepers of his fortune, the women who may love him, and the god of death himself.... show less

http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1985299.html

I'd had this on my list for years as a fantasy book set in a disguised Ireland. It isn't really; there's Irish, Welsh and Norse bits and pieces all jumbled up in a quest tale where I didn't really get very interested in the central character and the setting was much the same as many other fantasy novels. First of a trilogy but I won't get the other two.