Monday, September 30, 2019

"Norse Mythology" by Neil Gaiman

This was amusing, entertaining, and sometimes enlightening.  Neil Gaiman for the win again!

My husband actually got this out of the library because he heard somewhere in his section of the internet that it was really good.  I'd heard the same over here in my section of the internet, so when he finished it, I decided to read it before we took it back to the library.  And then life intervened, and War and Peace intervened, and I had to renew it twice before I got around to reading it.  Sigh.  

Once I actually started it, this was a fast, fun read.  It made me laugh aloud in many places, mostly in scenes involving Thor and Loki.  Y'all know that Thor is my favorite of the Avengers, and I admit I half read this just to get a better grasp of the mythology behind the comics that gave rise to the Thor of the MCU.  Now, this is Gaiman retelling Norse Mythology, and he himself first got into it because of the Thor comics, so... there's a nice circle of common interests there.

Anyway, my son keeps begging to read this, mostly because I laughed so much over it, but he's only 11 and parts of it are pretty graphic about violence, there's some scatological humor, and while there are no described sex-scenes, characters do talk about desiring each other, and they make love and produce offspring, so... I'm making him wait a few years.

Particularly Good Bits:

"Because," said Thor, "When something goes wrong, the first thing I always think is, it's Loki's fault.  It saves a lot of time" (p. 52).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for the aforementioned content.  No cussing that I recall, though.

4 comments:

  1. I've thought about picking this up in the past, but wasn't sure about it, so now I'll have to make a more concerted effort to procure it. Thanks for the review!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. RM, it's worth a read if you're interested in kind of getting a good feel for Norse mythology, I think.

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