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Written in Venom
A fantasy novel with a Norse mythology background, as Loki tells his own story.
145 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2000
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 8, 2018
Well, that was incredibly underwhelming. Retelling the Norse myths from Loki's perspective is certainly nothing new. Mike Vasich's Loki and Loki: Nine Naughty Tales of the Trickster, C. Gockel's Wolves, Alis Franklin's Stormbringer, and even Joanne Harris' Runemarks all do a much more interesting and original job of tackling the subject than this book.
This book tried to do the normal 'make all the other Norse gods bigger assholes than usual' thing but what it failed to do was the 'and make it seem like Loki is in the right' part which pretty much just left me reading a book where I hated literally everyone. I'm not saying that bad things weren't wrongly done to Loki in this book because they definitely were, but Loki wasn't really any better. A ridiculous amount of page time was dedicated to him repeatedly calling Freya a whore because she wouldn't sleep with him and at one time he literally rapes Idun but it's okay because he can tell she really liked it.
I pretty much just skimmed the later half of this book because I was so bored by it and also because the second half stops dealing with familiar myths concerning the gods and takes a weird detour into a lot of stuff happening with mortals on Midgard. There were a few interesting things here - like Fenris is actually just Loki in wolf form and not his son - but they were not really explored to their fullest potential and at the end of the day just didn't make sense. Add to that the fact that there wasn't really a single likable character in this entire novel and I feel like I'm being suuuuper generous with that two star rating.
This book tried to do the normal 'make all the other Norse gods bigger assholes than usual' thing but what it failed to do was the 'and make it seem like Loki is in the right' part which pretty much just left me reading a book where I hated literally everyone. I'm not saying that bad things weren't wrongly done to Loki in this book because they definitely were, but Loki wasn't really any better. A ridiculous amount of page time was dedicated to him repeatedly calling Freya a whore because she wouldn't sleep with him and at one time he literally rapes Idun but it's okay because he can tell she really liked it.
I pretty much just skimmed the later half of this book because I was so bored by it and also because the second half stops dealing with familiar myths concerning the gods and takes a weird detour into a lot of stuff happening with mortals on Midgard. There were a few interesting things here - like Fenris is actually just Loki in wolf form and not his son - but they were not really explored to their fullest potential and at the end of the day just didn't make sense. Add to that the fact that there wasn't really a single likable character in this entire novel and I feel like I'm being suuuuper generous with that two star rating.
October 25, 2013
Back when I was a youth we would have called this a "novella", it's a bit short for what I consider novel-length reading. Always leave them wanting more is sound advice, though, and this story certainly does that. Entertaining, even shocking, this version of Loki's tale kept me spellbound until it was over.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews