This is one of those books you both love and hate. It did some things really really well and some things really really badly.
First the bad. I agree with previous reviewers. The title is misleading. The whole Norse code premise didn't really make sense and either needed to be fleshed out more or nixed completely as it ended up having very little to do with the pertinent plot points. Mist's sudden need to visit Helheim to save a mortal she barely knew when she's managed to restrain herself from saving her sister for several months, is not explained very well. It is weak and perhaps the book would have been better if Mist had just decided it was time to save her sister after completing Valkyrie training. Also, several of the Norse gods act very little like you'd expect. This isn't necessarily bad, but it needed better explanation. If you are going to turn the nicest gods into baddies then you need to give the reader a sense of why or how this happened. The bad guys were obvious from the very beginning leaving us with little surprises but big questions regarding motives that are never really addressed but in the shallowest of terms. With the exception of Hermod, all the characters are shallowly written and the reader has little invested in what happens to them. This also causes the budding romances to seem awkward and, well, not romantic. But the biggest problem with this book is that it begins abruptly and ends abruptly making you feel as if you missed something vital. I hate to say it, but this is a book that would have benefitted from being longer and/or all the people associated with the Norse Code project edited out. It needed a better foundation upon which to build.
The good. The sense of scale and power of the world ending was truly poetic. In fact, as I was reading this novel I was time and time again reminded of the epic quality of the film The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. It was the curious mix of absurdity, scale, myth, and horror that made me keep reading despite myself. When Hermod faces against wolf pups who can suck him into a vacuum of nonexistence, dwarven swords made of out seven kinds of nothing, or the nine realms of Yggdrasil spilling and bleeding out into each other as Ragnorak draws closer, it was then that I was fascinated by this novel and its imagery. Despite these not being the Norse gods I recognize from mythology, I kind of like that von Eekhout made heroes and villains out of the lesser known Norse gods and that he subverted the idea of who starts Ragnorak and for what purposes. There were several silly villains but the most charismatic was the blink-and-you-miss-him-in-mythology Vidar. Hod, another god with very little to do in mythology but accidentally kill his brother was another interesting side character who I think should have been utilized more. The humor was also pretty dark and almost Joss Wedon-esque. It saved some rather stupid scenes in my humble opinion.
Overall an interesting tale to read *if* you already love Norse mythology and can overlook a few aggravating problems with the plot.
First the bad. I agree with previous reviewers. The title is misleading. The whole Norse code premise didn't really make sense and either needed to be fleshed out more or nixed completely as it ended up having very little to do with the pertinent plot points. Mist's sudden need to visit Helheim to save a mortal she barely knew when she's managed to restrain herself from saving her sister for several months, is not explained very well. It is weak and perhaps the book would have been better if Mist had just decided it was time to save her sister after completing Valkyrie training. Also, several of the Norse gods act very little like you'd expect. This isn't necessarily bad, but it needed better explanation. If you are going to turn the nicest gods into baddies then you need to give the reader a sense of why or how this happened. The bad guys were obvious from the very beginning leaving us with little surprises but big questions regarding motives that are never really addressed but in the shallowest of terms. With the exception of Hermod, all the characters are shallowly written and the reader has little invested in what happens to them. This also causes the budding romances to seem awkward and, well, not romantic. But the biggest problem with this book is that it begins abruptly and ends abruptly making you feel as if you missed something vital. I hate to say it, but this is a book that would have benefitted from being longer and/or all the people associated with the Norse Code project edited out. It needed a better foundation upon which to build.
The good. The sense of scale and power of the world ending was truly poetic. In fact, as I was reading this novel I was time and time again reminded of the epic quality of the film The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. It was the curious mix of absurdity, scale, myth, and horror that made me keep reading despite myself. When Hermod faces against wolf pups who can suck him into a vacuum of nonexistence, dwarven swords made of out seven kinds of nothing, or the nine realms of Yggdrasil spilling and bleeding out into each other as Ragnorak draws closer, it was then that I was fascinated by this novel and its imagery. Despite these not being the Norse gods I recognize from mythology, I kind of like that von Eekhout made heroes and villains out of the lesser known Norse gods and that he subverted the idea of who starts Ragnorak and for what purposes. There were several silly villains but the most charismatic was the blink-and-you-miss-him-in-mythology Vidar. Hod, another god with very little to do in mythology but accidentally kill his brother was another interesting side character who I think should have been utilized more. The humor was also pretty dark and almost Joss Wedon-esque. It saved some rather stupid scenes in my humble opinion.
Overall an interesting tale to read *if* you already love Norse mythology and can overlook a few aggravating problems with the plot.
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