Title The Hurricane Party Series --- Author Klas Östergren Cover Art --- Publisher Canongate - 2007 First Printing Canongate - 2007 Category Mythology Warnings None Website --- Main Characters Hanck Orn, Loki, Odin Main Elements Gods

Hanck Orn’s son is dead. When they come to the door they tell him it was a heart attack, but he knows they are lying. So he travels to the archipelago at the outermost reaches of the land to find out what really happened. He lands on an island and is met by a young woman, hair streaked with blood, raving like a lunatic. She is one of the sisters, who tell him the story of how his son died in the great hall of the Clan, the Norse gods, who were holding a party. But the festivities soon got out of hand, the guests began to argue with one another, and the mischievous shapeshifter Loki dealt a deadly blow. Set in a dystopian future that recalls Orwell and Zamyatin, Klas Östergren has weaved a dizzying story of magnificent scope and foul play. Moving from the golden halls to the depths of the underworld, it is about one man’s search for justice for his son in a world on the brink.

The Canongate Mythology series had its ups and downs. Some of the books were amazing, and some were incredibly boring and the myth so obcure or poorly used that you couldn't figure out the connection. This was one of the better ones.

We start off in a kind of post-apocalyptic Sweden. I'm not quite sure what happened, must have been some kind of climate disaster where people who leave the city often die from sickness out there. There's no forests anymore. There is a rainy season and a really hot, dry summer one, but no snow. It was an interesting setting, and given the "everyday" kind of guy our protagonist is, it had vibes of 1984, only Big Brother was run by the Norse gods.

We never really find out what happened to the world to turn it into what it has become, it wasn't Ragnarok, since based on the events in the book, that couldn't have happened yet. In fact, we're only at the very start of that process. See, Hanck's son works at Aegir's inn where once a year the gods gather for a feast. But this is that special year, when Loki loses it and starts insulting everyone, the event that leads up to him being bound by the intestines of his own son with snake venom dripping on his face. The flyting...the inuslt contest. Hanck's son dies in the process and Hanck wants to know what happened to him.

Thus our everyday man protoganist goes on a journey to find out, he visits the inn, he visits the Old Man, he even visits the afterlife. I found this part of the book very enjoyable. Admittedly, I had to get through 100 pages that came before that, watching Hanck's son be born and grow up. A lovely father/son tale, but it was a tad slow, while still puzzling through the worldbuilding which isn't really explained, the near future dystopia wasn't really needed.

This is very much a retelling of Norse myth, doing an adult version of Rick Riordan and weaving the Norse gods into modern day Sweden and what influence they might exert over us as the ruling "Clan", but it is at it's heart a tale of the love between father and son and the lengths that love will drive someone to find the truth.

As an aside, I was reading Riordan's Magnus Chase books at the same time. They made an excellent pair. Not just to contrast the humour in one and the dystopia of the other, but because the flyting was a major part of Riordan's book, but he didn't describe the original event in any detail, here in Hurricane Party, we get the whole story.