The Gospel of Loki is an interesting twist on the
traditional Norse saga’s. Where those have a broader, more heroic context, this
narrative is intensely personal. The viewpoint is hardly heroic either – being a
first person account, from none other than the titular Loki: Norse god,
trickster, general troublemaker. Unsurprisingly, it puts a bit of a different
spin on the traditional saga myth. If you’ve absorbed any of those, this will
certainly tweak your preconceptions. If you’re coming to Norse mythology fresh,
then it’s still a perfectly enjoyable story.
The narrative takes the reader along with Loki, through the
creation of the worlds, all the way through to Ragnarok, the end of everything.
Its strength is in the narrative voice. Loki narrates the events of the Norse
myths entirely in the tone of someone reciting history, or a family anecdote –
which is extremely thematically appropriate. The voice that is used to speak to the reader
is informal, wry, and very emotive; it contains the character that the author
has drawn for Loki very well.
That character is, really, the core of the book. Given that
Loki opens with a piece on the unreliability of all narrators, his own story is
thrown into doubt, part of the tradition of conflicting accounts. On the other
hand, his actions are consistent with his internal character. He’s an
individual torn between two worlds, between the elemental chaos and disorder
from which he was formed, and the fascinatingly ordered world of what we see as
reality. That dichotomy gets him into quite a lot of trouble; acting with his nature causes all sorts of
problems. But there are some wonderfully complex layers present here. Loki
works to be accepted amongst the inhabitants of Asgard, strives to fit in,
despite his origins, distinct from their own; that he is rebuffed and, by his
own account, abused, helps keep the reader sympathetic as he begins to turn
against erstwhile allies.
Much like the allure of Shakespeare’s Othello, the reader is
pulled into Loki’s descent into villainy. The self-justifications, the unfortunate
actions, the moments of misunderstanding which cause events to fall one way or
another. Loki doesn’t come off as human, particularly, but he does come off as
understandable and even, at least some of the time, likable. The reader is left wondering if their
narrator is justified after all. What the author has done here is take a
previously unrepentant individual, and given them more depth, more drives, made
them visible and sympathetic to the reader. And it works very well.
The other characters aren’t given much of the same depth in
Loki’s narration. The female goddesses of Asgard, in particular, come off as
ciphers. On the other hand, this may well be intentional – they’re not very well represented in the source material
either, and Loki isn’t really the most empathetic of characters anyway. Most of
the cast seem to serve as foils for, or levers on, our narrator. Then again,
this is Loki’s story, and the reader is already adrift in Loki’s internal
monologue, so this may be acceptable as a narrative device. Still, it would
have been nice to have a little more flesh on the bones of Odin, Heimdall and
the rest.
The story cleaves close to the original text of the Saga’s,
and remains engaging and entertaining throughout. I won’t spoil it here, but
will say that there’s quite a lot of action and adventure along the way. There’s
also a fair amount of scheming – almost all of it on Loki’s part, but it
heightens the dramatic tension nicely. The story trots along at a good pace,
and given that the prose itself is so engaging, it’s quite difficult to put
down.
Overall, a really nice character piece, on one of the more
sympathetic and engaging “villains” of the last few millennia. Very easy to
read, with a plot that both informs and entertains the reader. Worth looking
into.
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