Of Swords and Parasols

Three years into an endless winter, Cathy Castillo and her sister, Lilly, were gunned down. Lilly, a career activist and sometime anarchist, went to Hel, while Cathy was resurrected as a valkyrie named Mist. Now she looks for other descendants of Odin for NorseCODE, an organization devoted to gathering warriors in preparation for Ragnarok, accompanied by Grimnir, the Einherjar (warrior) who trained her to fight. Except, to join the ranks of Odin’s warriors, you have to die in battle, meaning her job is to find people, kidnap them, and either kill them or force them to fight her or Grimnir to death.

This, understandably, causes a bit of a crisis of faith, and Mist, not happy with Asgard’s ideas of the afterlife, goes rogue, determined to find her way to Hel and break Lilly and as many others out as she can. (Not wise, but hey, she’s young.) To do this, she tracks down the self-exiled, nomadic Asgardian, Hermod (who was sent to Hel to try to reclaim Baldur after his murder, but failed) who has seen signs that Ragnarok is coming. Meanwhile, in Hel, Lilly meets the blind Hod, who is the pariah of both Asgard and Hel due to being the one Loki tricked into killing Baldur, and suspicious that something cagey is up, the two set off to lead a revolution in Hel. Just in time for Ragnarok, of course.

When it comes to gods in fiction, they tend to end up really annoying, or feeling more like people who have been around for a long time than deities. Except for a couple with brief appearances, the gods here fall into the latter category. Enjoyable, but not really godlike. But I love stories set before, during, or soon after and apocalypse, and I really like van Eekhout’s take on Norse mythology-especially how he doesn’t focus on the normal “big name” figures, but mostly uses the less-known ones-and his characters. (I’m especially fond of Mist and Grimnir’s partnership.)

( spoilers )