Publisher: Harper Voyager
Released: 30th of March 2023
Brynhild is a Valkyrie: shieldmaiden of the All-Father, chooser of the slain. But now she too has fallen, flightless in her exile.
Gudrun is a princess of Burgundy, a daughter of the Rhine, a prize for an invading king – a king whose brother Attila has other plans, and a dragon to call upon.
And in the songs to be sung, there is another hero: Sigurd, a warrior with a sword sharper than the new moon.
As the legends tell, these names are destined to be rivals, fated as enemies. But here on Midgard, legends can be lies…
For not all heroes are heroic, nor all monsters monstrous. And a shieldmaiden may yet find that love is the greatest weapon of all.
From Sunday Times bestselling author Kate Heartfield comes a glorious, lyrical retelling of one of Norse mythology’s greatest epics.
What I Have to Say
This was a good story but I found that I couldn't connect to the characters or the plot at all. Normally when I read, I feel like I'm in the head of the characters and seeing the action through their eyes, but for some reason with this one, I just didn't connect this way. I tried and tried to work out the reason why, but I honestly don't have one. This book just didn't hit home.
I loved the author's version of the myth, probably a lot more than I'd have liked the original myth. She changed a lot to give Brynhild more agency and then to make it more gay, which is always an improvement. I loved the magic that Gudrun had as well. It was a really interesting way of doing magic.
The ending felt a bit off though. It made sense that she set up loads of threads to make the story bigger. But it kind of felt like she got to the end of the myth and then panicked because the book was too short and so put in extra stuff to make it longer. It just didn't feel so connected to the original myth.
If you're interested in Norse Mythology it might be worth a read.
No comments:
Post a Comment