Wednesday, April 11, 2018

This is the end, my only friend the end

A day late on this one (had some dental work yesterday and wasn't up to much of anything), but I did finally finish Scourged, the final book in Kevin Hearne's Iron Druid Chronicles. 

Again, we're following three major characters,  Atticus, Granuaile, and Owen as Ragnarok begins. Well, actually, before Hel and Loki emerge, we first have to clean up a few dangling plot threads, like Granuaile finishing taking out the vampires of Poland before being shipped off to Taiwan to fight the Yama Kings along side Sun Wukong, and Owen putting out fires (literally) as different events as the elementals call to him.

Atticus himself first takes care of the World Serpent off Ireland's coast, the heads to Sweden where Loki and Hel are supposed to emerge. And they do. And we get a fairly decent fight between all the Western pantheons vs the armies of Niflheim.

I'll say again, while he captures the spirit of most of the Norse pantheon, his big bad, Loki falls flat. Also, by spending most of Ragnarok focused on plots to take out Hel, one gets the impression that we're missing something bigger and grander in scale.

On the other hand, it didn't end as I thought it would, which was a nice surprise.

No comments:

Post a Comment