Matt Thorsen knows that his ancestor was Thor, literally. His family are left with some abilities. Fen and Laurie Brekke are the descendents of Loki, a seer sees that Matt will be pivotal in Ragnarok and maybe it might be a good idea, from his family's point of view, for him to fail, they're not the only ones who want him to fail. He goes on the run and starts gathering more gods descendents around him.
This MG series tries (and only sorta fails) to be for Norse mythology what the Percy Jackson series is for Greek mythology. That being said, it has a pretty great story that I had no trouble getting behind, some likable characters, and is overall quite enjoyable.
I loved the setting, because...South Dakota. You can't really beat it. Mostly Deadwood and Mount Rushmore, completely ignoring the best place EVER, but still, it was a lot of fun. But it didn't fit in with the story, as South Dakota is just about as UN-Scandivian as you can get in the States. I get that it is fantasy, so you can do whatever you feel like, but really. It left me with a bit of a disconnect from the story, because I was thinking about how much it doesn't fit the whole time.
It had a really rough start for me. The writing was childish, the characters were annoying, and I couldn't get into it. As the book progressed, most of these issues faded away, thank goodness. As for the characters, I like Matt and Fen, and especially Laurie and Baldwin, but Fen and Laurie's relationship is ever so slightly disturbing. At first I was excited to see a cousin duo who were best friends and the boy was protective of the girl and everything would be great, right? Wrong. Fen is far too overprotective of Laurie, to the point where if she wasn't so strong willed, she wouldn't do anything because he would never let her do anything. He needs to be around her constantly and gets upset if she gets too chummy with anyone else, especially if it is a boy, usually Matt. They touch a lot, holding hands or whatnot, and it's just all very weird. Laurie is not as clingy as Fen is and generally regards a lot of his weird behavior towards her with an eye-roll and continues on with her life, but I sincerely hope there's less of that in the forthcoming books or whatever it is gets resolved.
Side note: I went from one Norse mythology series (Starling by Lesley Livingston) to another in the space of a few days and it was actually kinda fun to compare which direction each went with regards to the gods and Ragnarok. If anyone cares, I liked how this one deals with Ragnarok a bit better.
What a terrific compact read, 111 pages of details, backstory, action & juicy characters, that make you crave for more. The details in the action scenes came alive in my mind so vividly that it felt like I was actually there.
Valkyrie's Vengeance is an expansion of Melissa's novella 'The Child Thief' & is also the prequel to the "Loki's Wolves" series. We get a taste of Melissa's characters in the series, they are juicy, broken & fighting for survival.
An extremely thought out book & an epic start to the series, I will be reading more from you soon.
Matt Thorsen is a descendent of the Norse god Thor – and that’s a hard legacy to live with. His overachieving older brothers and exacting parents made life difficult – and that was before he became a champion ordained to fight Jormugandr at the upcoming Ragnorak.
Now Matt, and the descendants of the other gods, must make a hasty alliance in the hope of being ready for the coming conflict – and maybe telling the old stories differently this time.
Norse gods – that’s me signed up. Yes we’re always easy to please with a little mythology. And the concept of this book is an excellent one – the descendants of the Norse gods facing a Ragnorak almost by proxy. We have these kids, especially Matt Thorsen, both following prophecy and being guided by prophecy by also not letting it bind them and dictate to them. Sure they’re the stand in for their many-time ancestors, but that doesn’t mean they are them
Concept-wise, I am sold. Sign me up for the whole series!
Execution-wise… not so much. I did find the book just a bit… simple. It’s not that it’s badly written or the characters are poor or that the plot is bad – it’s just it’s all so very… simple. Everything just feels kind of easy and kind of linear.
Personal conflicts and histories are touched upon – like Matt’s betrayal by his family or the conflict of their impossibly high expectations or the whole conflict of going against authority when he’s the sheriff’s son – but they’re not developed. They’re just kind of there, like some back story has been splashed onto the characters to fill in the gaps but it’s not gone into any great depth or detail. And I can kind of see how it’s shaped the characters but not to any great depths. Ongoing conflicts with the characters – like the twins suspicion or Matt and Fen’s rivalry seem to just… resolve. Fen’s conflict with the wulfenkind packs causes some short term angst and then – resolve. Again, nothing stands out as badly written or handled it’s just the conflict isn’t all that conflicty. The closest we get is a little twist at the end, but even then it’s not that twisty nor does it last a great deal of time.
The plot is really linear. Matt learns about his legendary destiny/fate/quest then happily stumbles over some norns who give him cryptic clues leading to the next step, where he meets Valkyries that happily point them the next way. Each step of the way is very clearly laid out (albeit somewhat convolutedly at times to create extra steps in the chain), usually with pretty clear instructions over what to do next – so they go do it. Even after convenient Norse beings stop dropping in to give step by step instructions, Laurie develops a power that removes the whole searching element from the quest. The twins, when they meet them, are somewhat suspicious and that looked like it would be a more involved element of the story but even then the suspicion was pretty much put aside in favour of a fight scene and the twins just kind of attach themselves to the party without any real development of them, their concerns or anything else.
This book isn’t badly written, I want to stress that. The action flows, it’s not over descriptive.
But it is so linear – Matt has a quest to find the other god-descendents. But because of the plot he doesn’t have to look for them, he doesn’t have to track them down or go through any real steps to identify them and he doesn’t even have to convince them to join him. So all he has to do is… travel? And even then not so much because of another plot element. This leaves us with “Matt looks for kids. Matt finds them. Matt has kids” with little in the way of inter-character drama to fill much of the gaps. We have musing from Matt and Finn, but it’s not exactly rich and conflict laden, given the revelations. What does fill the gaps are action scenes – fighting numerous mythological monsters takes up a fair amount of page space.
A middle-grades book. The author is Kelley Armstrong - is the 'initial' thing an attempt to sell this book to boys? Aren't we past that yet?
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