The great Norse myths are woven into the fabric of our storytelling – from Tolkien, Alan Garner and Rosemary Sutcliff to Game of Thrones and Marvel Comics. They are also an inspiration for Neil Gaiman’s own award-bedecked, best-selling fiction. Now he reaches back through time to the original source stories in a thrilling and vivid rendition of the great Norse tales. Gaiman’s gods are thoroughly alive – irascible, visceral, playful and passionate – and the tales carry us from the beginning of everything to Ragnarök and the twilight of the gods. Galvanised by Gaiman’s prose, Thor, Loki, Odin and Freya are irresistible forces for modern listeners, and the crackling, brilliant writing demands to be heard around an open fire on a freezing, starlit night.
Have you ever read the Prose Edda or the Poetic Edda? Painful. Gaiman’s Norse Mythology is a joy. Some complain that when compared to Gaiman’s other works, Norse Mythology falls a bit flat. The goal of this project was not to tell new stories, but to breath new life into the old stories. Gaiman stays true to the source materials and presents the stories of Thor and Odin and Loki and all of the Norse gods in a language that feels fresh and engaging. I’ve worked my way through the Prose Edda and the Poetic Edda and they are anything but an easy read. The prose of a millennia past is something…
As Only Gaiman Can As someone who had a general knowledge of Norse mythology, I can’t say this book breaks any new ground for me, but I still enjoyed it immensely. Its that easy storytelling style that Gaiman does so well that let me breeze through it. He’s truly a fantastic storyteller, and this an accessible, fun adaptation of those myths.
It is clear Gaiman has a great interest in the subject and he put a lot … I bought this book right when it released at midnight and being hard to put down, I read it completely through the night. It was a fairly quick read but very enjoyable. As I recently read my first novel by Gaiman, I was interested in his writing style and intrigued to hear he would be retelling Norse Mythology.Â