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

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Melvin Burgess’s Bloodtide was one of my favourite books growing up so I was really intrigued to read his newest release – Loki. These cookies help provide information on metrics the number of visitors, bounce rate, traffic source, etc. I loved that Marvin’s portrayal of Loki is as crude, obnoxious, vain, humorous, sarcastic and unfiltered as we’ve seen in most other portrayals of the God. a mischievous, unpredictable and clever book that breathes new life into an already fascinating character and godly race. Step into the ancient fir-tree forests of Scandinavia and bear witness to legends as epic as those of the Greeks and the Romans.

If there’s one good thing about the book, it’s that it makes me want to haul out my old Norse myth projects and work on them. Melvin Burgess revolutionised children’s literature with the infamous cult novels Junk and Doing It. It felt very unnecessary to the story and this alongside the reader being regularly insulted really pulled me out of the story. Melvin Burgess’ s first novel, The Cry of the Wolf, was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal, which he then won for his cult novel Smack, along with the Guardian's Children's Fiction Prize.i was not prepared for this since i only bought this book because of its title, nor have i any knowledge of Norse myths (MCU knowledge doesn't count) - i did/do not know which stories are true to the original myths and which are not. 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. I may be a bit biased as i absolutely love everything to do with Loki and I've read so many books about them. 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 been a while since i had such mixed feelings about something i read or that a book made me so angry while being perfectly fine and engaging for the most part but i suppose we all have our triggers. This was the kind of book that was almost a reading experience - a rollercoaster of a novel with a narrative voice that never let up for a minute. There is a problem, though, which threatens to undermine the whole, which is that Burgess makes Tyr – a valorous god who sacrifices his own hand to the wolf Fenrir – into the liar, instead of Loki, rather defeating the point of his character.Loki acknowledges himself as a liar (indeed, the inventor of the lie) but promises that, this time, we're getting the truth.

This book covered all of this from the arch, sarcastic, sincere, aggrieved, and constantly entertaining voice of Loki talking to the reader, and delighted in upheaving the established narrative.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. 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. Het is zeker een aanrader voor mensen die geïnteresseerd zijn in de Noordse mythologie, maar het is geen vereiste. Melvin Burgess' s first novel, The Cry of the Wolf , was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal, which he then won for his cult novel Smack , along with the Guardian's Children's Fiction Prize.