Bryn is a Valkyrie, leader of her sisters especially now
they had broken away from Odin. But despite the rift, she is the key to Odin’s
immortality
And Loki is loose – and looking for vengeance
Korvain also hunts Bryn, seeking to bring down Odin in
revenge for his lost people and at the commands of his clan leader – but shortly
after meeting Brynn his resolve crumbles and he soon finds himself in the role
of protector, not assassin.
I have to say I hate the way that women are depicted in
this book. All of them. Now, there are possibly some women in this book who I
may have appreciated if they were separate, but collectively it’s just one mass
of badness
Most of them are victims. And not just victims, but
pretty much helpless victims. Frigg, powerful goddess, is thoroughly demonised
before becoming a victim; we never see one scrap, one iota of power or
capability from her. The Valkyries – VALKYRIES! Warrior women, dressed in mail
with blood stained weapons – exist to be a collection of damsels to be saved.
We never see any real fight or power from them – they’re just hunted down one
by one, put up no fight and are easily brought down. The whole book revolves
around rescuing and protecting these utterly helpless figures.
Even their leader and our supposed protagonist, Bryn, is
an immensely frustrating figure. She never actually does anything. She
constantly talks a good game but we never see her fight or actually show any toughness
or even make a good decision. Or make a decision at all. When her sisters are
targeted she has a tantrum, falls apart and asks a man to go check on them. She
doesn’t even all them and ask them all to gather up – she sends a man round to
help. Her one and only attempted plan is to sacrifice herself and hope that
Loki, the big bad, doesn’t hurt anyone else and can be trusted
Her master plan is to trust Loki. No, really.
At least there’s a big strong man to rescue her!
As well as victimisation there’s some severely dubious
sexual issues going on here. Firstly the Valkyries are all virgins – thousand year
old virgins by the command of Odin. This could have been used to present Odin’s
oppressive patriarchy- but no-one treats his demand as unreasonable, only his
harsh punishment of Kara, a Valkyrie who broke it – as wrong. The other
Valkyries MAINTAIN their virginity after they have left his side. On top of
this Kara, that one Valykrie who broke the taboo, is continually sex shamed,
throws herself relentlessly at Korvain and is generally cringe worthy in her
utter desperation to get laid. This is also the totality of her character. And
Frigg, villainous lady that she is, is of course an adulteress who tries to seduce,
well, every man she sees and, again, is lacking anything else in terms of characterisation
– she hates Odin (because she’s jealous of the oh-so-chaste valykries) and wants
to have sex with any and all men. She is slut shamed pretty horrendously for
this including the line:
“She was the one who ushered people in
between her legs like it was a movie theatre about to close its doors for the
screening”
Demonised or pitiable sexual woman cast against virginal
protagonists of purity? That’s a trope
Then there’s Taer, the sister of Korvain’s best friend.
Why does she exist? To have a crush on Korvain (like all women everywhere it
seems) and to be extra angst and leverage as bad guys force menfolk’s
co-operation by threatening her with rape and murder. That’s pretty much the
entire point of her.
I’ve opened with these problems because they consume the
book – and kind of define the book. While this book throws around a lot of
names from Norse Mythology (and was what made me so intrigued in the first
place) it does very little to use Norse Mythology, develop the mythology or
make it relevant beyond names.
We have a story of an angry, unhinged guy with a knife
(yes trope) who is released by evil-and-foolish Jezebel McSlutwhoria and then goes
torturing and murdering other women while Protagonist Lady wrings her hands and
does very little that’s effective until the Big Strong Super Sexy Man moves in
and rescues her. He’s supposed to kill her and is part of a super secret organisation
of Deadly Sexy Dudes but he doesn’t because he knows her for 5 seconds he finds
her super sexy and happily risks his friends, his life and his people because
The Cock Hath Spoken.
There’s no attempt to develop these characters even
slightly and less to make their Norse mythology relevant. Hati and Skoll could
just as easily have been Thug #1 and Thug #2. Frigg is never developed beyond
evil Jezebel McSluthWhoria (we could have at least had some cynical witty snark
about the serial adulterer who broke up Odin and hers marriage being the
goddess of marriage!). Odin is some distant figure who does nothing, despite
Loki’s rampage. Why is the All Father so completely and utterly uninvolved? The
most he does is fret about where Loki is – oh if only he had, say, two birds
that flew around the world to bring him information!
The Valkyries may as well be Disney princesses
collectively eating shiny red apples for how useful they are – they all have
special tattoo swords but they may as well be glass slippers for how useful
they are. Not only does Brynn not protect the others, but she can’t even manage
to send a text round warning them – she has to rely on Sexy Guy Korvain to do home
visits.
And Loki? He’s an angry, dangerous insane man with a
knife who stabs people. And once disguises himself (and even that is terrible
because he tells us how much he hates disguising himself as a woman. Really?
The guy who became a mare to distract a super-stallion and ended up giving
birth to an 8 legged spider-horse is upset by assuming a human female form?)
Again, no sense of mythology to him. He may as well have charged in and yelled “My name is Loki Freyrson and
you killed my son, prepare to die!” and it would have been as relevant to
his characterisation.
The whole concept is pointless and completely
interchangeable with any other mildly powerful group you could imagine –
witches, mutants, aliens, Norse gods, it’s all irrelevant which means, with an
equally uninspiring plot, pretty pointless.
In terms of minority – the only POC I remember is a
briefly appearing Black drug dealer and maybe a bouncer in a club and there are
no LGBT characters – but a fair amount of homophobic insults.
Finished this book
highly disappointed and pretty much bemused. Why go to all this effort to pull
out all of these Norse names – including all of the not-very-well-known names
of the Valkyries – if you’re going to do so very little with them? Why, apparently,
do a fair bit of research to then include none of it? Why do this much work and
develop none of the characters? Why tease us with such potential and present
such generic dullness full of terrible depictions of women? I can’t even say
this book has potential or that I think the next book will improve because there’s
no hints of that at all. It’s all very sad really.
