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The Gospel Of Loki (2014)

by Joanne Harris(Favorite Author)

2.94 of 5 Votes: 7

ISBN

1473202353 (ISBN13: 9781473202351)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Gollancz

review 1: It's a great book. A fun and easy reading, full of Loki's well known sarcasm and it was also an interesting way to know a little bit more about the Nordic Gods. I think it's a great prequel to the Runemarks series that takes place 500 years later. I totally recommend starting with this book, it makes it a lot easier to understand what is going on in Runemarks. I've already started Runemarks and I'm loving it :) I didn't know Joanne Harris was this good! I couldn't put The Gospel of Loki down and with Runemarks its the same ;)
review 2: This book is a real departure from Joanne Harris' usual style - she is the author of "Chocolat", which I mention as her most famous work. Loki's voice is like nothing I have heard from this author before. I really enjoyed the s... moretory and the character of Loki, who is also our narrator. He is everything that an agent of Chaos and a trickster should be - charming, erudite, passionate, lively, funny, erudite, changeable, untrustworthy, and occasionally incredibly annoying; I could at points sympathise with the gods living around him in Asgard. I didn't like how he referred to himself in his story, and occasionally his contemporary vocabulary and manner of speaking jarred and took me out of the story. Harris has adopted the style of epic mythology very well, I felt, changing her writing style quite significantly to achieve the right epic yet entertaining tone. She has those moments of vagueness and the characterisation of some of the gods of Asgard is necessarily minimal, as mythology is often more about types than individual characters. At the same time, there are moments of sheer brilliance and/or comedy - "Thor at the wedding" is probably all I need to say about that!. I was concerned that I wouldn't be able to read this book without seeing the actors/characters from "The Avengers", and that the film characterisation would affect my perception of the book characterisation, but this didn't happen - I could see similarities between the film and book versions of Loki and Thor in particular (mostly in terms of their relationship) but it wasn't a case of one characterisation overshadowing the other, rather author and film both understanding the basic characters, then adding their own flourishes. If you're a fan of Joanne Harris, read this, and see another side to her writing. If you are not a fan of her writing, and especially if you are a fan of fantasy fiction, read this as an richly entertaining story with all the crucial fantasy and epic elements. less

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