Blurb:

The end is near. The war is just beginning.

Ragnarök’s shadow looms over Asgard. The gods grow fearful, and Odin, in a desperate attempt to fill the benches of Valhöll with more slain heroes, sends his elite warriors to Midgard to spark conflicts. Drake, their leader, would rather fight to prevent the end of the world before it began, for Muninn, Odin’s daughter, is fated to die during the last great battle.

But as Drake and his brothers strive to accomplish Odin’s will on Midgard, a plan born in the darkness of Loki’s cell—and acted upon by someone close to Drake—is set in motion. The snare tightens around Drake, and every step the warrior takes toward the woman he loves in secret brings Ragnarök closer.

Review:

So far, I’ve reviewed two of Baptiste Pinson Wu’s novels that toy with history and mythology to a wondrous degree (link for the “Yellow Sky Revolt” review here and link to the “Undead Samurai” review here). And all of them (sans “Forest of Swords” because I haven’t read it yet) have blown me away with how they reenacted history and made me live it. 

On a side note from that, I read way too many mythology books, and out of all of them, both Roman and Norse mythology are my favourite. Greek and Egyptian come second and then everything else. And so, when I saw “...Midgard”, my mind instinctively went to the “request an ARC” file and about ten minutes later, I had the book on my iPad ready to read. Fast forward to the end of the day, where I’m sitting in a vehicle of movement, staring at the ending of the book, and wishing for book two. Mainly due to Wu being able to create cliffhangers that leave you waiting for an “and”, and then due to my incessant need to know more. 

If I had to convince my friends and family to read this book, I’d give them these three sentences.

“Drake is but a simple leader of warriors. Until things go wrong, and the end of days begins. Will he be able to escape his fate? Only time will tell.”,

alongside my usual spiel of my various “find out mores”. But, as usual, it says nothing about who Drake is, nothing about the warriors he leads, and nothing about the end of days, which I will probably end up spelling wrong, Ragnarok.

First off, we have the main character, Drake. We and Drake himself don’t know his actual name, but that doesn’t bother him, whereas we are left pondering over his actual identity (Wu, I’d like more information about him please. PLEASE!). Throughout the book, we learn his character, his flaws, his history with the Aesir and Vanir, and his slipping sanity in the present. He grows to understand Loki’s point of things a bit, after he gets trapped in the same cave due to that trickster, and he reminisces about the past week that has gotten him into there. By the end of it, I think he’s still sane and more or less ready to go stop Loki.

Then we have the plotline of “Blood of Midgard”, which is just a recap of a week that ultimately ended in a grave mistake, pun intended, and then a sanity losing session with a schizophrenic Sigyn. It was easy enough to follow, with a time table given to us readers to understand whether Drake was whalloping in the cave of Loki or if it was a week prior, ending in a hopeful, but also not hopeful way.

After that, there's Norse mythology in “Blood of Midgard”. If the name itself doesn’t already state that, there’s the back blurb, and Drake's own words that just lovingly take old mythology, and craft it into an understandably bleak world, with a bit of joy thrown in. And it takes place in the middle ages, more commonly known as the dark ages, in the northern parts of Europe and beyond, with a Roman soldier tossed into the mix alongside his beliefs of the Roman gods (because why not?). There’s talk of the apocalypse, and Valhalla goes under a different name, the old norse name Valhöll, and it works better than I thought it would. 

There wasn’t much to say about the negatives of this book, and Baptiste Pinson Wu has perfected most of his craft when it comes to storytelling. The only thing I’d have liked to see a bit more of would be the overall story itself. More details, more intrigue and more backstabbing. Besides that, only the coincidences seem a bit too fishy, but it’s not too much of a problem.

If you like Norse mythology, captivating storytelling, and lots of nailbiting, this one's for you, and I cannot wait to see where Wu will take this trilogy.

As always, thank you for reading this review, and I hope I’ve helped nudge you towards your next read. If this doesn’t sound like your cup of tea, don’t fret, there’s more reviews here, covering a wide range of novels. Joseph John Lee has reviewed an epic tale unsurpassed in complexity, mental extrapolation and the only series I couldn’t finish due to the aforementioned two words. And Elli Breakspear is the latest amongst the team to review the first novel (review here) in the Elmerian Chronicles, feeling the same emotional pain I and others have felt after finishing it.

Wherever you are reading this review, have a wonderfully good morning, good afternoon, good evening and good night.