That Which We Are Reading
If you come to this as a Marvel fangirl/boy, you are going to be disappointed. Definitely not a tie in. If, like me, Marvel is a sort of expansion pack for your love of Norse myth, this book, friends, is for you. Loki is the witty, charming, manipulative bastard of his roots, a product of the world created by Odin as much as Odin himself is. A peripheral member of a pantheon that, like our “humble narrator” is comprised of beings far more human than the prevalent Judeo-Christian-Islamic paradigm allow. Which makes them that much more comprehensible and that much more fun. There are some definite turn-the-mirror-on-ourselves truths here, though those are more the elements of the source material more than a product of plot but mostly, The Gospel of Loki is just a Hel of a lot of fun. A quick one too; at 320p, it’s one of my shorter recent attempts and it’s so engaging, you’ll tear through what’s there with pauses only for fits of giggles.
A note on acquisition: I saw a blurb for the book in SciFi Now a couple of months ago and preordered it from Amazon that very night. As publication approached, however, and then passed, I got a series of emails explaining Amazon was unable to locate a publisher copy. Which was odd, because they let me preorder it. Whatever. The library didn’t have, and wasn’t scheduled to get, The Gospel of Loki so I cancelled my initial order and found a “used” copy (which is in fact pristine, brand-new) from a second hand book dealer in the UK via the Amazon Marketplace. The publisher is in the UK, so it may be the US version will come out at some later date, but I wasn’t about it wait for it. Even with shipping, the “used” copy I ordered was cheaper than the publisher set price on Amazon, so it ended up being a pretty good deal for me.
Recent Comments