Elizabeth Tammi

I was given an ARC of this book from Netgalley in exchange for honest review.

I was originally interested in this book because the cover is cute and the synopsis is very Norse-Myth heavy. If there’s one thing I love, it’s myths! The context of the story, is that our main character Lena is the eldest child of the village chief, and undertakes a quest when her little sister mysteriously dies. The quest being to bring back her sister’s soul back to Midgard (Earth).

I was honestly kind of shocked by how dumb Lena was as a character. Is Norse myth not something she grew up with? Wouldn’t she know that her sister’s soul replacement needs to be similar in purity/skill/age/gender in order for this switch to go unnoticed? Lena struggles with finding a soul replacement candidate, when it was pretty obvious from page one what needed to be done. Even when it came to just daily life with scenes with her family and friends it felt like Lena was always 10 steps behind the reader, which shouldn’t be the case when the narrator is not omniscient. It was a genuinely bizarre experience.

Another star-detractor was the whole confusing scenario of Lena and Amal’s relationship. They allow an arranged marriage to each other pretty quickly, even though they supposedly don’t want to be married; and they were also pretty quick to want to kill each other at the slightest suggestion. It was really strange to see childhood best friends keeping secrets and turning on each other in the space of a paragraph. I don’t see how a resolution between our main characters is possible, nor how the climax prevents/delays Ragnorok in any conceivable way. There was a big moment where a magical dagger is lost to another realm, but no importance was ever imbued upon the dagger so why should it being lost have any meaning? It was just a narrative tool to reveal some information about Loki…

That allllll being said, I’m genuinely intrigued by the ending. I think Tammi has set up book two to have a different POV which will most likely make the book more enjoyable, but I’m honestly not sure if I’ll get around to it.… (más)

3.5

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a review. This has in no way influenced my opinion.

This book was pretty good. I read through it in practically one day and enjoyed it. Its scenery was great and the female leads were powerful and portrayed a good image of femininity, but there were a few things that did not escape my attention and nothing really stood out as extraordinary.

First, while the chapters alternated POVs on a patterned basis and there were indications at the beginning of each chapter, both the perspectives were very similar. There wasn't a clear individual voice coming through for each of the characters and I honestly struggled near the tart of each chapter getting used to seeing the switch between the use of the names Atalanta and Kahina because the Is sounded so similar. I went back quite a few times to check who's perspective I was reading in. But, the author did quite a good job of depicting Artemis. I'm not a fan of retellings that make the gods/goddesses soft, and Tammi did an excellent job of keeping Artemis' wilder and cold side.

Secondly, the first part of the story dragged a bit. I might be because I'm quite familiar with Atalanta's tale, but I did find that it was very slow. After a while, the set-up died down and I was almost into the story, but I felt like the author was glossing over some of the more action-packed parts in favour of characters observing each other and musing about how beautiful Greece is (okay, not the worst thing to muse over) and their pasts. The flashbacks were done a very neat way, told in the third person while the rest of the story was in first, but there were only two of them and they were for Kahina. I would have liked to see some from Atalanta too. She mentioned her past, and, as I mentioned before, I am very familiar with it, but I would have liked to have a better feeling of how the author was interpreting it because she did make a lot of changes to Atalanta's story. And I wish there had been some more flashbacks, in the first person preferably. I found that there was a lot of fuzziness around the hole oracle of Apollo thing and I wasn't really getting why it was a bad thing other than Kahina hated it.

Lastly, this book was very, very light. The story of Atalanta is a rather gruesome one and this was a very light reimagination. In the original version I read, Atalanta murdered all the competitors if she caught up to them; in this one she just made them leave. The romance seemed to come slightly out of nowhere. The love interest spent a good chunk of the book trying to forget the other existed and were very focused on their own problems and then they were in love and killing for each other. while it wasn't the worst (it could have been insta-love!) it was not the best either. It would have benefited from some more development and build up.

However, I did like some of the creative liberties the author took with this work. It was interesting to see how the transformations and prophecy's played out in a way that connected the two girls and it made the ending very solid because I could pick out the elements of the original tale that were being played upon and I thoroughly enjoyed the ending.

In all, I think this book could have been a bit longer with some more build-up and some more backstory, but it's still a very enjoyable read, especially if you're not all that familiar with Atalanta. I think those who don't know her story will like it a bit more.… (más)