**OK **
Ye gods! Yawn!
Informative but not engaging
Ye gods! Yawn!
Informative but not engaging
I know I am meant to swoon with joy because it is by (spoken in reverent terms) ... Neil Gaiman ... but no, no swooning on my part. I felt very let down by something that I had been eagerly anticipating.
While it definitely added to my scant knowledge of Norse mythology, it was not an engaging read. It felt more like a lowly translation by someone not adept at either language.
The short story format was fine but it, combined with the language used, made it seem more of a children's version than a richly detailed, magical presentation of Norse mythology. It was all too simplistic. Dialogue in particular was poorly done - was he initially planning a graphic novel? And if there is an argument that it was a written presentation of oral storytelling, then I would have fallen asleep around the fire. It was informative but not colourful, it was peopled with characters but had no charisma, it was paraphrasing rather than engaging storytelling.
