Category 16: The first book in a new-to-you YA or middle grade series
Loki's Wolves
Author: K.L. Armstrong & M.A. Marr
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Published: May 7 2013
Page count: 358
Genres: fantasy, mythology
Page count: 358
Genres: fantasy, mythology
Date read: January 6, 2018
Number of times read: 1
Format: paperback/audiobookSource: Chapters/Indigo/Waterloo Public Library
Summary
In Viking times, Norse myths predicted the end of the world, an event called Ragnarok, that only the gods can stop. When this apocalypse happens, the gods must battle the monsters--wolves the size of the sun, serpents that span the seabeds, all bent on destroying the world.
The gods died a long time ago.
Matt Thorsen knows every Norse myth, saga, and god as if it was family history--because it is family history. Most people in the modern-day town of Blackwell, South Dakota, in fact, are direct descendants of either Thor or Loki, including Matt's classmates Fen and Laurie Brekke.
However, knowing the legends and completely believing them are two different things. When the rune readers reveal that Ragnarok is coming and kids--led by Matt--will stand in for the gods in the final battle, he can hardly believe it. Matt, Laurie, and Fen's lives will never be the same as they race to put together an unstoppable team to prevent the end of the world. -- via Goodreads
In Viking times, Norse myths predicted the end of the world, an event called Ragnarok, that only the gods can stop. When this apocalypse happens, the gods must battle the monsters--wolves the size of the sun, serpents that span the seabeds, all bent on destroying the world.
The gods died a long time ago.
Matt Thorsen knows every Norse myth, saga, and god as if it was family history--because it is family history. Most people in the modern-day town of Blackwell, South Dakota, in fact, are direct descendants of either Thor or Loki, including Matt's classmates Fen and Laurie Brekke.
However, knowing the legends and completely believing them are two different things. When the rune readers reveal that Ragnarok is coming and kids--led by Matt--will stand in for the gods in the final battle, he can hardly believe it. Matt, Laurie, and Fen's lives will never be the same as they race to put together an unstoppable team to prevent the end of the world. -- via Goodreads
Review
Okay, we've gone from Norse mythology to Christian mythology and now we're going to circle back around to Norse mythology again. This time in the form of Kelley Armstrong and Melissa Marr's YA series The Blackwell Pages and specifically the first book, Loki's Wolves. The little cover blurb on my edition is from the Kirkus Review and states that the book is ideal for fans of Percy Jackson. Well, as a fan of Percy, and Riordan's work in general, accurate cover blurb is accurate. I was initially leery of trying these books even though, as you know, I love Kelley Armstrong; I was nervous that it was just going to end up being too derivative of Riordan's work. But I really shouldn't have been. Having come to this series later because of that trepidation, I got the read Riordan's first two Magnus Chase books before I got to this one. And I can safely say it's not derivative, they have taken two very different approaches in their adaptations of the Norse myths. I actually regret not asking Kelley Armstrong about her and Melissa's writing process for this series at the meet and greet I attended with her in February of this year, because you can definitely tell the books have been written by two people but it' kind of hard to parse out whose contribution was whose, at least for me.
It's very tropey but not in a bad way, I find a lot of people denigrate the use of tropes, but we've literally been doing it for centuries. Archetypes are classic storytelling tools, and really they're totally just tropes, that's all tropes are, just a less pretentious sounding way of saying archetype. But there is tropey in a bad way and tropey in a good way. This book uses tropes really effectively, as any good mythological revisioning should. You want to be hitting the tropes that remind people of the original myths with your retelling, but you want to do it so that it still seems fresh and new and interesting. I think that's especially well encapsulated in the characterisation of the three main characters in this novel. They are distinct, complex individual teens with their own well-developed characteristics and personalities but there are just enough notes of sameness to the mythological characters that they're representing that you can see the tropes that tell you "Yes, Matt Thorsen, on the nose name aside, is absolutely a descendant of Thor, but he's also his own person." It's also narratively tropey, with a similarish series of events to the events of the first Percy Jackson book, but not in a derivative way as I much feared before reading the series. Percy's crew and Matt's crew go on journeys with similar enough end goals, but that's to be expected because they're mythological retellings. The elements of the Norse mythology do make this a vastly different story than did the Greek elements in Riordan's series.
One really nice touch to this book was the sporadic illustrations by Vivienne To, they really do add a pop to the story and make it interesting. And one downside is that all of the adults in the book were just awful.
If you like any of Rick Riordan's books, or if you're a Potterhead then I think you'll find these books enjoyable.
It's very tropey but not in a bad way, I find a lot of people denigrate the use of tropes, but we've literally been doing it for centuries. Archetypes are classic storytelling tools, and really they're totally just tropes, that's all tropes are, just a less pretentious sounding way of saying archetype. But there is tropey in a bad way and tropey in a good way. This book uses tropes really effectively, as any good mythological revisioning should. You want to be hitting the tropes that remind people of the original myths with your retelling, but you want to do it so that it still seems fresh and new and interesting. I think that's especially well encapsulated in the characterisation of the three main characters in this novel. They are distinct, complex individual teens with their own well-developed characteristics and personalities but there are just enough notes of sameness to the mythological characters that they're representing that you can see the tropes that tell you "Yes, Matt Thorsen, on the nose name aside, is absolutely a descendant of Thor, but he's also his own person." It's also narratively tropey, with a similarish series of events to the events of the first Percy Jackson book, but not in a derivative way as I much feared before reading the series. Percy's crew and Matt's crew go on journeys with similar enough end goals, but that's to be expected because they're mythological retellings. The elements of the Norse mythology do make this a vastly different story than did the Greek elements in Riordan's series.
One really nice touch to this book was the sporadic illustrations by Vivienne To, they really do add a pop to the story and make it interesting. And one downside is that all of the adults in the book were just awful.
If you like any of Rick Riordan's books, or if you're a Potterhead then I think you'll find these books enjoyable.
Overall Rating
 |
| 4 bolts |
No comments:
Post a Comment