Norse Mythology
Neil Gaiman. Norton, $25.95 (256p) ISBN 978-0-393-60909-7
Having already appropriated Odin and Loki for his novel American Gods, Gaiman turns his restless imagination to a retelling of Norse folklore (a youthful interest of his). He begins by introducing us to the three main mythological figures: Odin, the highest and oldest of the gods; his son, Thor, who makes up in brawn what he lacks in brains; and Loki, offspring of giants and a wily trickster. In a series of stories, we learn how Thor acquired his famous hammer, Mjollnir, how Odin tricked a giant into building a wall around Asgard, the home of the gods, how Loki helped Thor retrieve his hammer from the ogre that had stolen it, and how a visit to the land of the giants resulted in the humbling of Thor and Loki. In most of the stories, a consistent dynamic rules as one god tries to get something over on another god, but novelist that he is, Gaiman also provides a dramatic continuity to these stories that takes us from the birth of the gods to their blood-soaked twilight. Employing dialogue that is anachronistically current in nature, Gaiman has great fun in bringing these gods down to a human level. Like John Gardner in Grendel, a classic retelling of Beowulf, and Philip Pullman in his rewriting of Hans Christian Andersen stories, Gaiman takes a well-worn subject and makes it his own. [em](Feb.)
[/em]
Details
Reviewed on: 12/12/2016
Genre: Fiction
Compact Disc - 978-0-06-283448-5
Compact Disc - 978-0-06-266363-4
Downloadable Audio - 978-0-06-266364-1
Hardcover - 978-1-4104-9949-3
Open Ebook - 978-0-393-60910-3
Other - 978-1-5067-1875-0
Paperback - 978-7-5594-1673-5
Paperback - 304 pages - 978-0-393-35618-2
Paperback - 320 pages - 978-1-4328-5233-7
Paperback - 304 pages - 978-1-4088-9195-7