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A review by tsunni
Slaughtered Gods by Thilde Kold Holdt
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.75
This series is quite an accomplishment of writing, but I'm very torn on how I feel about this series. I'm seeing it in two conflicting ways; as an ode to Norse myths, especially titans and the events leading to Ragnarok, and also as a fantasy novel.
As an ode to Norse myths, this is very thorough. If you're into the stories of the giants, the nine realms, Odin, runes, vikings; you're going to get your fill. The story bounces from reference to reference, sometimes going out of its way just to touch briefly on one thing Loki or whichever Norse god did, to make sure the events happening later in the overall plot make sense in context. I liked a lot of this, even with my knowledge of Norse mythology being limited to Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology and scatterings of Loki/Thor stories in the past.
As a fantasy novel this book got pretty frustrating. By about a third of the way in, I realized that the same disparate, shotgun scattered pattern of character chapter structure I saw in the last two books wasn't going to stop, and a lot of threads I was hoping would start coming together in some way were going to just fizzle out. Because the story is constrained to covering so much of Norse myth, what we get of story arcs for the large cast of characters was sacrificed for that purpose. The pacing was rough and frustrating as a result, to the point I almost dropped reading the rest of book 3. I stopped caring about characters doing things that ultimately served no purpose for them, because the myth had to happen in a certain way, which negated their actions; this happens over and over. It didn't help the viewpoints changed so often between so many characters, many of which were taking fruitless action. The books, this and the previous two, were far too long for characters I had stopped caring about. Book 3 made me like the previous two books less in hindsight, which honestly isn't a great realization.
Still, I think the author did an amazing job on the positives. I really liked the ending, when I feel like she had a moment to step away from the constraints of Ragnarok and just give some main characters time to interact without deference to myth. That part was far too brief for my taste, but it softened the landing somewhat.
I think recommending this is going to be dependent on how much you're into Norse mythology. I would really hesitate to recommend this as a general fantasy story, especially a character focused one.
As an ode to Norse myths, this is very thorough. If you're into the stories of the giants, the nine realms, Odin, runes, vikings; you're going to get your fill. The story bounces from reference to reference, sometimes going out of its way just to touch briefly on one thing Loki or whichever Norse god did, to make sure the events happening later in the overall plot make sense in context. I liked a lot of this, even with my knowledge of Norse mythology being limited to Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology and scatterings of Loki/Thor stories in the past.
As a fantasy novel this book got pretty frustrating. By about a third of the way in, I realized that the same disparate, shotgun scattered pattern of character chapter structure I saw in the last two books wasn't going to stop, and a lot of threads I was hoping would start coming together in some way were going to just fizzle out. Because the story is constrained to covering so much of Norse myth, what we get of story arcs for the large cast of characters was sacrificed for that purpose. The pacing was rough and frustrating as a result, to the point I almost dropped reading the rest of book 3. I stopped caring about characters doing things that ultimately served no purpose for them, because the myth had to happen in a certain way, which negated their actions; this happens over and over. It didn't help the viewpoints changed so often between so many characters, many of which were taking fruitless action. The books, this and the previous two, were far too long for characters I had stopped caring about. Book 3 made me like the previous two books less in hindsight, which honestly isn't a great realization.
Still, I think the author did an amazing job on the positives. I really liked the ending, when I feel like she had a moment to step away from the constraints of Ragnarok and just give some main characters time to interact without deference to myth. That part was far too brief for my taste, but it softened the landing somewhat.
I think recommending this is going to be dependent on how much you're into Norse mythology. I would really hesitate to recommend this as a general fantasy story, especially a character focused one.