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davisrj66 's review for:
Odd and the Frost Giants
by Neil Gaiman
I read this book literally in about an hour. Partly blc it's fairly short. Partly blc the language is fairly straightforward. Notice I didn't say simple. After specifically explaining that Odd's name didn't mean "odd", he has no problem using the word "odd" in its normal (or not normal) sense. It's like Odd's smile: looks idiotically simple at first, then gets more sly and wise and all knowing and a little mischievous the more you look.
The book is an excellent springboard Norse mythology, which I believe is an unjustly neglected part of our Northern European heritage. Everyone knows about Greek and Roman mythology, but not Norse despite the fact that we celebrate them every week on Mani's Day, Tyr's Day, Woden's Day, Thor's Day and Freya's Day.
Gaiman makes these oblique, half sentence references to events as if he's elbowing us in the ribs saying, "Get it? Remember that part?" If you know, you wink back and say, "yup." If you don't, you suddenly feel like the outsider at a party where you don't understand all the inside jokes. At which point you have this burning need to look it up and not feel foolish in front of all those people - the ones we imagined for the sake of this metaphor. It's been a long, long time since I read about Odin, Thor and the rest, so a book that took me an hour to read, cost me 2 1/2 on Wikipedia.
Moving on to American God's. I'll let you know how it goes.
The book is an excellent springboard Norse mythology, which I believe is an unjustly neglected part of our Northern European heritage. Everyone knows about Greek and Roman mythology, but not Norse despite the fact that we celebrate them every week on Mani's Day, Tyr's Day, Woden's Day, Thor's Day and Freya's Day.
Gaiman makes these oblique, half sentence references to events as if he's elbowing us in the ribs saying, "Get it? Remember that part?" If you know, you wink back and say, "yup." If you don't, you suddenly feel like the outsider at a party where you don't understand all the inside jokes. At which point you have this burning need to look it up and not feel foolish in front of all those people - the ones we imagined for the sake of this metaphor. It's been a long, long time since I read about Odin, Thor and the rest, so a book that took me an hour to read, cost me 2 1/2 on Wikipedia.
Moving on to American God's. I'll let you know how it goes.