Dreaming the Enemy - David Metzenthen

In the instance of Dreaming the Enemy, however, I can appreciate what the author was going for. There is a disconnection here between the reader and the characters, and the story is told in a cold and passive way with lots of telling and very little, if any, showing. It follows a non-linear path that makes it hard to tell what’s now and what’s then, what’s really happening, and what’s in Johnny’s imagination.

The rest of this review can be found HERE!

Review to come, probably to tie in with the release of the book in October.

When, in the years that followed, the Gods told this tale, late at night, in their great hall, they always hesitated at this point, because in a moment Odd will reach into his jerkin, and pull out something carved of wood, and none of them was certain what it was.

Some of the Gods claimed that it was a wooden key, and some said it was a wooden heart. There was a school of thought that maintained that what Odd had presented the giant was a realistic carving of Thor's hammer, and that the Giant had been unable to tell the real from the false, and had fled, in terror.

They were wrong. 
It was none of these things.

'I'm here to drive the Frost Giants from Asgard,' explained Odd. Then he smiled at the Giant, a big, happy, irritating smile.

It was the smile that did it. If Odd had not smiled, the Giant would simply have picked him up and crushed the life from him, or squashed him against the boulder, or bitten his head off and kept him to snack on later. But that smile, a smile that said that Odd knew more than he was saying...

'I've seen rainbows on the snow sometimes,' said Odd, loud enough for the fox to hear, 'and on the side of buildings when, when the sun shone though the icicles. And I thought, ice is only water, so it must have rainbows in it too. When the water freezes, I think the rainbows are trapped into it, like fish in a shallow pool. And the sunlight sets them free.'