Reviews

I can honestly say - I still love it!
I just did a re-read to annotate it and now pass it on to another bookworm, in hopes they'll also fall in love with Sigyns story

bookish_intentions's review against another edition

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3.0

This story was good, mostly. I did enjoy it but it seemed chaotic. It was here, there and everywhere. Lol I mean, Loki actually gave birth to a horse? That was unexpected. Lol I enjoyed the love story between Loki and Sig but this book just didn’t capture and hold my attention. I can’t put my finger on exactly why though. Maybe because I couldn’t pronounce most of the words in the story and gave up trying 1/4 way through, I’m not sure. There were some parts that had me in tears though. Like when Fenrir is tired to a boulder after he trusts the people, or when Sleipnir is killed after just being rescued from Odin.

outtoexist's review against another edition

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emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Not a spectacular book or anything, but I'm obsessed with Loki so I loved it

lisbrary's review against another edition

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4.0

(3.5 Stars rounded up to 4 ✨)

I am a big fan of mythology retellings so I had to pick this book up immediately when I first heard about it. And although I know a lot about Greek mythology, Norse mythology was completely new to me.

The Goddess of Nothing At All is a Norse mythology retelling centered around Sigyn, the daughter of Odin, who is trying to find her place within the nine realms. Not a goddess yet, Sigyn struggles to be seen as "worthy" by her family and ultimately gets to prove herself when she brings the trickster god Loki back to court.

As not much is known about Sigyn in what remains of the original Norse mythology (other than that she is Loki‘s wife), Cat Rector did a brilliant job in giving a multi-dimensional story to Sigyn and I really enjoyed the fierceness of her as a protagonist. I also really enjoyed the very diverse representation of characters and the way toxic masculinity was tackled.

But although I really enjoyed this read, there were a few things that threw me off while reading.

The Goddess of Nothing At All heavily focuses on Sigyn and Loki‘s relationship and their children (duuuh). The thing that slightly bothered me while reading, was the way the very detailed descriptions of their domestic life messed with the pacing of the story (at least for me). Whereas the first half of the book reads in a very slow, rose-colored-glasses kind of way, the second half of the book deals with the mythology aspects of the book, leading up to Ragnarok. There is a lot of mythology crammed into a very short amount of time, with a very fast-paced storytelling. I personally would have wished for a more equal distribution of romance and mythology, so the pacing would have been equally distributed.

I also strongly disliked Loki after the first half of the book, which made me disconnect to Sigyn’s and his relationship overall. This might be very subjective, but the fact that I disconnected to the relationship aspect of TGONAA made it hard for me to follow Sigyn‘s character development and see her motivation behind her loyalties.

As I already said, I overall really enjoyed this book and immediately picked up a book on Norse mythology after, so I could read up on the myths. If you are fan of strong female protagonists, mythology, betrayal and unconditional love - this will definitely be for you. I am excited to see where the sequel takes us! :)

lis94's review against another edition

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5.0

I finished it in less than 24 hours. I think it’s self explanatory, but to be clear: I loved it immensely.

seleniumdrive's review against another edition

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4.0

Full disclosure: I read this book thinking I was fully prepared after reading the author's well-intended trigger warning page at the start (she even warns "Don't let the beginning fool you. This is not a soft book. I don't shy away from challenging topics, and many of my characters will be pushed to their emotional limits. This book may not be for you.")...and yet, I was not prepared.

The first 1/4 of the book was FULLY written for someone like me (& my romantic/happy/grey character romance tastes) in mind, and I loved it. 5/5 stars. Totally a story of a young woman/goddess coming into her own, and finding an unexpected fulfilling romance along the way. The romance itself and its (Adult) scenes were done so well. god i was LIVING for the first 1/4 of the book!!

Then the other 3/4 of the book hit me over the head and dragged me down into a pit. The author puts trigger warnings (on that same early page as mentioned above) of "vulgar language; gratuitous violence and torture; mental, emotional and verbal abuse; unhappy situations for LGBTQA+ characters; mentions of sexual coercion and rape; death and violence towards animals; discrimination and fantasy slurs; death" *BUT* she leaves out a lot of the spoiler-ish important ones (perhaps they're on her webpage, haven't looked) that I would've loved to know were in the book before I read it:

Spoiler

infidelity, bestiality, main character death, climactic battle full of death, bittersweet ending

.

Also, if you weren't expecting a very queer book, turn around now. Sigyn is bisexual + Loki genderfluid (pansexual I think?) and there are very explicit and less explicit scenes that demonstrate this. Other important side-characters are also very queer

Spoiler

(ex: a brother of Sigyn's, one of her sons)

. I thought it was all well done--but if you're looking for heterosexual romance, it is not in this book.

Why I docked this book a star: despite my knowledge (prior to reading this book) of Norse God myths being little more than what the MCU (i.e., the Thor movies, mostly) extrapolates, I *did* vaguely know about some of Loki's really wild antics in the actual myths...but I'm not sure I *quite* expected to see them fully fleshed out and put into play in this book. That wouldn't be worth docking a star, per se, but 1-2 of them involve

Spoiler

infidelity

, and that's REALLY not my jam, especially after the amazing romance in the first 1/4 of the book.

That and the

Spoiler

bittersweet ending full of TONS of death, including very main character and important side character death,

was really ALSO not my jam, despite going into this book KNOWING it wasn't going to be a happy book. I like to have my angst be WORTH IT in the end, you know? I have reality for depressing outcomes to angst, not novels.

So tl;dr: read this book if you want a really queer, dark, action/adventure retelling of Norse Gods myths (with Greek God myth tragic vibes), centering on Sigyn and Loki. Don't read if you're expecting a Romance or even a romantasy. Beyond the first 1/4 of the book, it's really not a happy book.

Despite all that, I overall really enjoyed the read and am ~70% thru book 2. Hoping book 2 finally resolves some of my unhappiness with book 1!

EDIT: if you would like to see me losing my mind, my livetweet is HERE. The spoilers are vague, other than mentioning what chapters I'm reacting to.

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