The Gospel of Loki does an excellent job of stitching together many of the Norse myths into a coherent narrative. At the same time, Harris gives Loki, Odin, and (to a lesser extent) the other gods of Asgard an understandable psychology. If you've ever wondered "Why do the gods put up with Loki's constant betrayals?", The Gospel of Loki gives you a plausible answer. ( )

I won this book in a First Reads giveaway and was excited as the book sounded great. When it arrived the cover was absolutely gorgeous. Sadly this was a case of don't judge a book by its cover. I was unable to actually complete the book because I found it so boring. I love mythology, but if I wanted to read a rehash of the original saga poetry, I'd just go read the originals. It is written in the saga/epic style, painstakingly so.

It is supposed to be from Loki's PoV and that bit is correct, however, his voice just doesn't feel right. It's written as a saga but then Loki and his fellow gods use language and concepts that are from modern day, while living in a very non-modern setting. It just doesn't mix. While Loki is the trickster god, the character is just immature and whining and not at all as fascinating as he could be written.

Maybe for some people this will tick all the boxes, but for me, it didn't. I like fantasy and stories, and I just couldn't muster any excitement for this litany of tales. ( )

Review to follow ... ( )

The Gospel of Loki starts well, with an account of the Norse foundation myth and of Odin's summoning of Loki from Chaos. The two then return to Asgard, and the whole book goes to pot.

Harris's prose is overly glib and, for some unaccountable reason, infested with anachronisms and modern usage that can only have been put there intentionally, there is so much of it. Harris includes in dialogue, and in Loki's narration, terms like "so shoot me", "boxing gloves", "pot pourri", "road rash", "Choose Life", "barbed wire", "chaise-longue", "pocketknife" and countless others. She even has the gods playing football against one another! Really? It's silly, sloppy and does nothing for her story.

Other sloppy matters are occasional omissions that are highly unlikely in terms of character and scenario. Harris has Loki sleeping with Sif and then cutting off her hair. The mercurial Thor is outraged at the loss of his wife's beautiful hair. Astoundingly, it never even occurs to Thor to get upset about his wife sleeping with his despised enemy. Does that seem at all likely for a Thunder God in the height of his anger?

Another example is at the battle of Ragnarok, where Loki and his children are arrayed against the gods. Odin rides out for battle on Sleipnir, the eight-legged horse. Sleipnir is also a child of Loki but Harris makes no comment or draws any inference from Odin enlisting one of Loki's children against him. Why wouldn't Loki make some sort of comment on that?

The book redeems itself somewhat as Harris recounts the lead-up to Ragnarok and the battle. There is less of the silliness and more driving of the plot, although the anachronisms keep coming.

Overall, this is a stupid book, barely worth your time. I wan't that keen on Gaiman's version of the Norse myths, but this one is dire. ( )

This was another one of my series-sampling audio listens, to see if I might want to pursue it in print someday. The answer: Nope!

Audio Narration
The narrator is George Guidall. I thought his voice was well-suited for this book which is told from the first-person perspective of Loki. His reading style fit the character well, without being too over-the-top about it. Actually, his narration was probably the best part of this audiobook for me.

Story
The story is told from the first-person perspective of Loki, covering the time from when Odin recruited Loki to join the Norse gods up through Ragnarok. Loki tells various stories about things he was involved with, explains the motivation behind his choices, and teaches us the lessons to be learned, which could basically be summed up as “never trust anyone”.

Aside from some very basic knowledge about Loki and some of the other gods in the story, I don’t know any traditional stories about Loki, so I couldn’t tell you if these are familiar stories told in a familiar way, or familiar stories told in an unexpectedly clever way, or unfamiliar stories, or what. All I can say is that very little of this was familiar to me, and I didn’t find any of it to be particularly clever.

Even though I didn’t care for the story much, I can’t actually think of much to complain about, except that sometimes Loki just seemed to rant on and on and on. I think that was more a sign of my disinterest than anything, though. I would listen for short periods at a time, then I’d be ready to stop. I finally knocked out the last 2 hours during a road trip, one hour during part of the drive there and the last hour during part of the drive back. That was the worst stretch. I oddly don’t do great with audiobooks in the car to begin with, and that was the longest stretch I’d forced myself to listen to in one sitting, but I just wanted to get it finished.

I’m rating it 2.5 stars, but I had a really hard time deciding whether to round up or down for Goodreads. Rounding down to 2 seems a little harsh because I didn’t think there was anything terrible about the book and I suspect this is more a case of me being the wrong audience. I don’t usually get very enthusiastic about stories that are heavily based on real-world mythologies anyway. Rounding up to 3 seemed overly generous based on how much it bored me. Last night I had decided to round up. After sleeping on it, I decided to round down. ( )