Loki: WICKED, VISCERAL, TRANSGRESSIVE: Norse gods as you've never seen them before

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It felt very unnecessary to the story and this alongside the reader being regularly insulted really pulled me out of the story. Melvin Burgess' first book, THE CRY OF THE WOLF (1990), was shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal which he then went on to win for the cult novel JUNK, along with the Guardian's Children's Fiction Prize. The story does play around with the original myth, taking the blame away from Loki in almost all of the stories, but keeps the stories as accurate to the original source material as possible, which makes it a really interesting read. Here Loki presents his unique perspective on life, the universe and especially his fellow Norse gods and goddesses.

Alongside the politics of Asgard, it charts the course of Loki’s many loves and families, from his mothering of Odin’s famous horse to his intense, turbulent, and, eventually, fatal relationship with Baldr the Beautiful – a tender and moving story of love that goes wrong, jealousy and a transitioning that is forbidden by society.His Loki doesn't feel like a powerful god, but rather like a flawed being trying to make the most out of the situations and life he has in front of him. There are other rough parts, as when the origin of humankind becomes a scene of scatology, prompting Loki to address the reader every so often as “arse-born”. Although I like the idea of the book, I think you really need to enjoy being insulted by the narrator and reading the wildest things. In spite of his cleverness and sparkling wit (or, perhaps, because of this), Loki struggles to find his place among the old patriarchal gods of supernatural power and is constantly at odds with the god of thunder—Thor.

Starting with the Norse creation myths, the trickster god Loki takes the reader on a wild ride through Norse mythology, from the time the gods - the founders of Asgard - defeated races of monsters, and hurtling through famous stories, including Odin hanging himself on the World Tree, the theft of the corrupting gold ring and the murder of Baldr, the god of love and the Sun. Loki isn't actually originally included in a lot of the stories he's telling throughout the book, but very fitting to his character, it also makes him come off as an unreliable narrator. It's an interesting spin on the subject matter, even if it doesn't have anything especially insightful to say about Norse myth as a whole.

This really lessened my enjoyment and meant the story didn’t captivate me as much as I was expecting it to.