Loki: WICKED, VISCERAL, TRANSGRESSIVE: Norse gods as you've never seen them before

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I have a general basic understanding of the major figures, and slightly better knowledge of a few specific stories, but I know there's a lot that I don't know! Burgess recounts Loki's genius with great gusto, pulling together many tales into one beautifully lyrical masterwork. Indeed, in the same interview he said that he decided to tell the myths from “Loki’s point of view as a kind of experiment. All the characters in the story are well developed and I loved that all the gods are a bit unreliable and untruthworthy.

The setup here is that we - as modern humans - are being told this story by Loki from his deep prison. ps: i am very impressed how Marvel reformed Loki from his myths to the one they cast Tom Hiddleston for. The novel functions almost as an autobiography, as readers are taken through Loki’s struggles finding belonging and relationships—both familial and romantic—that don’t always end well for him. Burgess frames his gleeful adult debut as Loki, Norse god of mischief, attempting to set his story straight. From creation myths and births to death and Ragnarok, the novel follows an episodic structure as Loki recounts through first person narration events and tales, gods' battles and love affairs, without a rosy sheen.In spite of his cleverness and sparkling wit (or, perhaps, because of this…) Loki struggles to find his place among the old patriarchal gods of supernatural power and is constantly at odds with the god of thunder – Thor. It's an interesting spin on the subject matter, even if it doesn't have anything especially insightful to say about Norse myth as a whole. Loki also shares his experience of love in its many forms including shape-shifting into a mare to distract a stallion resulting in the birth of Odin's famous eight-legged horse, his marriages to Sigyn and Angrboda, his monstrous children by the latter, and his intense, doomed relationship with Baldr the Beautiful. then again maybe modern retellings are simply not my cup of tea as it has been proven time and time again no matter how hard i try to enjoy them. Obviously the interest in Loki because of Marvel films has been fairly high over the years, though this book is very different to comic book adaptations, keeping a lot closer to the tone of edgier mythology retellings and not shying away from more brutal material.

The opening works particularly well, though I did find at times after this Loki's voice started to grate, which to be honest is probably a good depiction of Loki. Other parts, for example Loki's defence of some of his more unusual children, were enjoyable, but there were a lot of parts that were less interesting to me as someone who knows very little about Norse mythology in general so wasn't sure how Loki was spinning and reframing these tales. Ik heb overwogen om dit boek 5 sterren te geven, maar aan het einde was er toch een iets te grote afwijking van de originele mythe.From his birth to his inevitable demise, Loki recounts the stories you think you know, but with a fresh perspective. Although I like the idea of the book, I think you really need to enjoy being insulted by the narrator and reading the wildest things. The _ga cookie, installed by Google Analytics, calculates visitor, session and campaign data and also keeps track of site usage for the site's analytics report. the changes made to the original myths didn't seem to serve much purpose and the portrayal of the majority of the norse gods involved was exasperatingly black and white leaving no room for nuance, room that was no doubt used to present our beloved loki in the most favourable light possible, the unsung, misunderstood, and mistreated hero of asgard – hate to say it but i believe i've seen this movie before. He won the Lancashire County Library Children's Book of the Year Award for BLOODTIDE (1999) and the LA Times Book Prize for Young Adult Literature for DOING IT (2003).

Though Loki is at best an unreliable narrator, the overarching message here is to challenge the old ways and initiate new ways of the world. About the Book: Loki tells us the tale of how the gods, and their world, their realms, were all created, what part he had in it, and how we entered the picture too. What follows is an entertaining, unexpectely moving novel in which Loki, a self-admitted liar, lays bare the failings of the other gods and outlines his pivotal role in.Other elements touch on the modern understanding of gender fluidity, with one of the gods (I won't say who, because spoilers) challenging the rigid, patriarchal regime of Thor and Odin with their developing understanding of their own identity.

You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Burgess also infuses the gods with humanity: Odin sacrifices his eye to gain further knowledge, and turns into a wreck of a man, everyone’s great-grandfather on the edge of death. The narrative is more episodic than an overall story, and I found my interest waning at certain parts, particularly in the middle.And a great deal of the story is uncomplimentary enough to him that we might accept this, although it's also, perhaps, a story spun and pitched to meet our modern sensibilities, showing Loki as the one who preached love, who always counselled peace, who urged (and performed) diversity and tolerance. Loki does not offer a particularly incisive view of Norse myth, but it does have enough in it that’s witty or unusual to carry readers along on its own peculiar flow – rather like silver-tongued Loki himself. Publication dates are subject to change (although this is an extremely uncommon occurrence overall). Loki struggles to find his place among the old patriarchal gods of supernatural power and is constantly at odds with the god of thunder - Thor. I really liked this book, the way it builds a connected narrative throughout the different myths and how they change.