Hi readers,
Here's my first book review of the year! When I read that a new Neil Gaiman book was coming out I knew I had to read it. He is one of my favourite authors and I've now read all but three of his books. Then I found out that this book wasn't going to be a normal fiction novel but Gaiman's re-telling of Norse myths.
That made me more interested to read this book. I like myths and legends though the stories and characters don't often stick correctly with me! In addition to this, I'm into the Marvel superheroes movies and Thor and Loki are two of my favourite heroes. So, learning about their origin stories also applied to me.
Having never really read any Norse myths before and having just a basic knowledge of them means I can't compare this book to other collections. Though I do have another book called Viking Myths and Sagas; retold from ancient Norse texts which was recommended to me at a party, so as soon as I've read that I can look at seeing how good or bad Gaiman's take on Norse myths is. For now, though my feels about this book are pretty positive.
I found the myths easy to read, maybe because of Gaiman's style of writing, but maybe because these myths were originally written in a simplistic way so that they could be remembered and re-told? There wasn't much description of characters or backgrounds and I would have liked a bit more of both of these as I'm sure my little knowledge and imagination got some of the scenes I pictured wrong. The myths were easy to understand with basic plots, mostly the same characters and meaningful endings. Though there was a lot of repetition about magical items, animals, backgrounds of things which did slightly bug me.
The flow of the myths has this overall start, middle and ending feel and it reminded me of Bible stories. Firstly, there is the creation of all things and how things became like they are. Then there's the development of the Gods, other super beings and humans; they go on adventures and learn from their mistakes or get revenge over monsters and enemies. At the end, there is the death of the god Balder, the final punishment of Loki and Ragnarok - The End Of The World.
The main characters who appear or are mentioned in each myth are Odin - The All Father, Thor - his son, God of Thunder and Loki - The Trickster. (Who is often mistaken for a God but it actual a giant). As I read the stories, I realised that Marvel's impressions of the characters were influencing my overall thoughts about them. Mostly, these characters have been well represented by the comics and movies, though I was surprise to learn that Thor isn't that intelligent and Loki committed a lot of bad things - including killing gods or causing the deaths of others through his 'tricks.'
Some of the myths are about other Gods, giants and dwarfs which helps to give a deeper understanding. Though according to Gaiman, most of the Norse myths have been lost. So though, lesser Gods and Goddess etc appear, we don't know of any of their deeds and adventures. Gaiman attributes this to the growth of Christianity and that fact that many Norse myths were not written down.
One of the first reviews I saw about this book was questioning the audience because the reader found the text so simply written that they believed this was a children's book. However, the content is older teen and adult due to the violence, murders, sex and drinking that goes on. I don't think that children would enjoy or fully understand some of these myths. I believe this book is aimed at people coming to these myths for the first time and Gaiman does have a simplistic writing style. Also, he seems to have wanted to re-tell the myths as close as possible to their original format which was possibly kept basic.
Overall, I really enjoyed reading Norse Mythology. I found this a good starting point to the world of the Norse Gods. I was worried that my dyslexic brain might find it too complicated but with Gaiman's simple style of writing, the myths were easy to understand. I'm looking forward to reading more now and learning about some of the other Gods.
Thanks for reading!
Please check out my other blog; https://thestoryfiles.wordpress.com/
I write a new short story every day!
Links;
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30831912-norse-mythology
http://norse-mythology.net/
https://pixabay.com
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