Title Ragnarok: The End of the Gods Series --- Author A. S. Byatt Cover Art Mark Swan Publisher Alfred A. Knopf - 2011 First Printing 2011 Category Mythology Warnings None Main Characters Odin, Thor, Loki and the rest Main Elements Gods, giants, dwarves, elves, monsters

Ragnarok is the story of the end of the world. It is a tale of the destruction of life on this planet and the end of the gods themselves. What more relevant myth could any modern writer find?

As the bombs of the Blitz rain down on Britain, one young girl is evacuated to the countryside. She is struggling to make sense of her new wartime life. Then she is given a copy of Asgard and the Gods - a book of ancient Norse myths - and her inner and outer worlds are transformed.

How could this child know that fifty years on many of the birds and flowers she took for granted on her walks to school would become extinct?

War, natural disaster, reckless gods and the recognition of impermanence in the world are just some of the threads that A.S. Byatt weaves into this most timely of books. Linguistically stunning and imaginatively abundant, this is a landmark work of fiction from one of the world's truly great writers.

So far I've read five of the Canongate myth books, two of them bored me to tears, and three of them were amazing. This falls under the amazing category. For the most part, this book isn't technically a retelling, generally it was just repeating parts of the Norse myths. But it was woven into the experiences of "the thin girl", a child living out in the country during the WWII which must have felt very end of the worldish, what with bombs falling from the sky and not knowing if your father is going to come back or not. And what with all the gods that one could flesh out and give personalities too, it was mainly Jormungandr who got to get a little extra background story. I'd always pictured the Midgard Serpent as male, but Byatt made her female, which I felt worked quite well.

Byatt's writing style was beautiful, so even if you are familiar with the myths this is worth a re-read. And while technically the book didn't just focus on the Ragnarok tale itself...well, pretty much ALL the Norse myths lead up to it. Even something as simple as Frey falling in love with a giantess and giving his magic sword to a servant in exchange for him bringing the giantess back with him, well some undetermined amount of time later it means that Frey is without a sword at the end. We have to explore Loki's trickery because he does as much good for the gods (provides them with their famous weapons, gives birth to Sleipnir, etc) he is also the key to their undoing (he fathers Jormungandr and Fenrir who destroy Thor and Odin respectively).

I enjoyed how Byatt had the thin girl interpret the tales from her own young point of view. She considered her own Christian religion and the character of Jesus and kind of dismisses him as uninteresting. But the Norse tales captivate the girl. Maybe especially since the Norse gods don't really have great depth of personality, they are representations of other things, forces of nature, for the most part cruel, and definitely not human.

And honestly, one cannot get enough Loki. Trickster, genderfluid, mother to horses, father to wolves, beautiful but cruel, saving the gods when they get themselves into trouble, but also the one to initiate the end of the world. And just some of the other wonky stuff, like the fact the world was created from the corpse of a giant, his blood the seas, his brains the clouds (ick right? Who came up with that, ewwww). Then just weave all those ancient tales into the events of a modern war and you realize history doesn't change.

I also found one little snippet I hadn't come across elsewhere. See, in all the Ragnarok stories there is a rebirth after the end, a couple humans and gods survive and the world starts all over again. But it is believe that this is possibly a Christian addition, after all the stories were only written down after Christianity took over the Norse countries, a kind of resurrection tale to be more in line with Christian lore. Thus the original may NOT have had this last bit, depressingly, the end might have been intended to be the literally the end. Somehow that seems more appropriate.

Anyway, the tale sucked me in and it felt magical. Very enjoyable.