Posted by This one was part of Fantasy Book Critic’s grouping and has since been eliminated.
Plot:
This was a mash-up of Norse mythology and urban fantasy. It starts out with Trygger, the main character, and Thor being attacked by Loki. Trygger is Thor’s grandson and is trying to help fight against Loki but they’re overpowered. Loki manages to deal some serious damage to Thor, and basically kills him. Freya comes and tries to intervene, and raises the spirit of Thor and transfers Thor’s power to his grandson. She meanwhile traps Loki in a field and tasks Trygger with capturing nearly 200 Fallen who have escaped using the powers she’s transferred to him.
It takes him almost 1000 years to capture 195/200, and he’s seen a lot of shit. There are many descendants of Gods, but he’s never met one that live extended lives or have the powers that he has, their bloodlines are too diluted and removed since the Gods aren’t messing around with humanity anymore.
That is until he meets the descendent of Freya, Freya shows up after 1000 years of not talking to him and tells him this woman, Chloe, who’s there to help him round up the last 5. But he’s completely confused why Freya showed up after all this time, and with this woman who doesn’t even know how to fight. It turns out Chloe is over 200 years old, but hasn’t been training to fight, she’s been living among Loki’s descendants as a spy for Freya.
Two men show up and murder everyone in the house where Chloe was living with Loki’s descendants, they were being trained to hunt down and kill Trygger, but many of them were just kids and Chloe takes it rather hard.
The rest of the book revolves around Chloe being trained, her relationship with Trygger -strained at best – and hunting down The Fallen One’s, and Crawlers.
Final Score: 6/10
Characters:
Trygger is over 1000 years old and a loner, he’s extremely cold and closed off and he prefers it that way. He gets really annoyed with Chloe and how emotional she can be. He doesn’t mention anyone he’s ever loved, saying that he prefers sex over love. He’s a very machismo “alpha male” kind of persona. He’s pretty rough with Chloe too, doing some rather harsh shit like letting her wander through a city covered in blood, and doesn’t really feel bad about it. He has one friend that he trusts, and my god do I hate that character – he’s super obnoxious.
Chloe – despite being over 200 years old I would peg her experience and maturity level at like 25 years old. She hasn’t been training to be able to defend herself, she doesn’t seem to know how to cope with things well either. She is putting up with a lot though, Trygger is not someone I’d ever want to have to live with. She has a dog named Rusty who’s adorable, and also magical and she risks her life to save him – so she won some points from me there.
Final Score: 4/10
World Building
- The gods used to be involved with the world but they’ve since lost interest. There are many different descendants of the Gods living on Earth, but their god-blood is so thin it doesn’t do much for them outside of giving them special attention from the Gods.
- There are Witches in this world, and things called Crawlers. Crawlers are evil spirit/demon things that hop from host body to host body feeding off their human hosts ‘light’. People who are prone to ‘sin’ are more likely to be victims of the Crawlers, they smell bad too – you can tell there’s a Crawler in the room if it smells like rotten eggs.
- The book is set in London despite it starting out in ancient Norway, Tryggers been living there for 200 years trying to track down the last 5
Final Score: 6/10
Originality:
I haven’t seen much in the way of Norse mythology so far in SPFBO, a few light mentions here and there – but they haven’t been urban fantasy. There was a slight spin on the old Norse mythology and it’s not often used, at least in the books I’ve picked up.
Final score: 6/10
Pacing/Prose/Tone:
This is a lighter book overall, I think the relationship between Chloe and Trygger was supposed to be an oddball couple pairing that plays off one another. It’s not really a dark book despite demons and assassins being int it, there’s some violence and action but it’s not really the focus.
The pacing was okay, it was shorter so I got through it in a day or so.
Pacing Final Score: 7/10
Writing Final Score: 7/10
Audience:
- For people who like urban fantasy
- For people who like smaller cast
- For people who like norse mythology
- For people who like opposites stuck together
- For people who like shorter faster paced books
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