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Title | Loki's Wolves
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Author | K.L. Armstrong & M.A. Marr
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Cover Art | Vivenne To
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Publisher | Little, Brown & Company - 2014
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First Printing | Little, Brown & Company - 2013
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Title | Odin's Ravens
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Author | K.L. Armstrong & M.A. Marr
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Cover Art | Vivenne To
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Publisher | Little, Brown & Company - 2015
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First Printing | Little, Brown & Company - 2014
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Title | Thor's Serpents
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Author | K.L. Armstrong & M.A. Marr
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Cover Art | Vivenne To
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Publisher | Little, Brown & Company - 2016
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First Printing | Little, Brown & Company - 2015
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Category | Middle Grade
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Warnings | None
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Main Characters | Matt, Laurie, Fen, Baldwin, Ray, Rayna, Owen
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Main Elements | Gods, monsters
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Website | ---
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 Loki's Wolves
"The runes have spoken. We have our champion...Matthew Thorsen."
Matt hears the words, but he can't believe them. He's Thor's representative? Destined to fight trolls, monstrous wolves, and giant serpents...or the world ends? He's only thirteen.
Although Matt has known he is a modern-day descendant of Thor, he's always lived a normal kid's life. in fact, most people in the small town of Blackwell, South Dakota, are direct descendants of either Thor or Loki, including Matt's classmates Fen and Laurie Brekke. No big deal.
But now the end of the world is coming and it's up to the champions to fight in the place of the long-dead gods. Matt's, Laurie's, and Fen's lives will never be the same as they race to put together an unstoppable team, find Thor's hammer and shield, and prevent the world from ending.
In their middle grade debut, K.L. Armstrong and M.A. Marr begin the epic Blackwell Pages series with this action-packed adventure, filled with larger-than-life legends, gripping battles, and an engaging cast of characters who bring the myths to life.
Odin's Ravens
Seven kids, Thor's hammer, and a whole lot of Valkyries are the only thing standing against the end of the world.
When thirteen-year-olds Matt Thorsen, and Fen and Laurie Brekke, modern-day descendants of Thor and Loki, discovered they were fated to take the places of the Norse gods in an epic battle against the apocalypse, they thought they knew how things would play out. Gather the other descendants standing in for the gods, defeat a giant serpent, and save the world. No problem, right?
Wrong. The descendants' journey grinds to a halt when their friend Baldwin is poisoned and Matt, Fen and Laurie must travel to the Underworld in hopes of saving him. From there, they'll have to reunite the challengers, find Thor's hammer, and save humanity - that is, if they can survive a journey filled with enough tooth-and-nail battles, monstrous beasts, and godly enemies to make Matt and his friends legends in their own right.
Thor's Serpents
Norse legends walk among us...
Thirteen-year-olds Matt, Laurie, and Fen have beaten near-impossible odds to assemble their fellow descendants and champions of the Norse gods, coming face-to-face with trolls, fire-breathing monsters, and even death. Now they have to tackle their most epic quest of all: stopping the apocalypse in its tracks.
With the fate of humanity hanging in the balance, there isn't a lot of room for mistakes - and to save the world, each of them must learn what it realy means to be a champion. The stakes couldn't be higher in this action-packed and thrilling conclusion to the Blackwell Pages trilogy.
At first I found the premise weird. So we've got these kids that are the descendants of the Norse Gods, some know of their ancestry and others do not. The gods themselves are all dead. But Ragnarok, where the gods are to die, hasn't happened yet, so when it does, someone has to fight in the place of those gods, a champion chosen out of each bloodline...all of whom are like thirteen years old????? I know, I know, to be a proper Middle Grade book, the kids have to be the one to save the world, even though in this case the adults aren't clueless, they are all aware of, and most of them believe in, the prophecy. But through whatever contrived mechanisms required, the kids will have to do this all on their own. The latter nonsensicality I shrugged off due to the target age group, but I couldn't ever figure out why the gods would be dead before Ragnarok happened, while at the same time all the monsters involved (Fenrir, Garm, etc) are all alive and well.
Also, the chance that all of the necessary descendants ALL live around South Dakota was a bit of a stretch, but I guess having a thirteen year old figure out how to gather up people around the world without being old enough to have a driver's license I guess explains the plot necessity of sticking local. I did like the "out in the boondocks" setting though, New York and L.A. already get enough end of the world coverage.
But if I ignored that bit, I found the story overall to be enjoyable enough. A range of character traits among the kids from the duty bound Matt, to the troublemaker Fen, the overly happy Baldwin (hey, he can't get hurt, I'd be happy all the time too!), and a morose Owen. Toss in a few twists and turns and bits of the prophecy you just can't cheat and it made for a fun adventure quest with lots of monsters, challenges, tests and family troubles.
I was irked a bit by the fact that some gods got in (I don't recall Freya playing a big part in Ragnarok) and others are completely left out (Garm is there but his foe Tyr apparently didn't have any kids to take his place?). I guess it was ok to leave out Heimdall since his opponent was Loki, who was also currently deceased. I wouldn't try to learn Norse mythology from these books, especially as there didn't seem that many tales of Norse gods mixing up genes with the mortal folk, not like the Greek gods forever spawning demi-gods, but unlike the Egyptian gods that don't physically manifest in our world, the Norse gods could definitely mingle with us humans.
The characters and story took over though, and by the end I really wanted to find out how they would avert the worst of the possible outcomes. See, in the original tale, both the gods and the monsters all died (and in the original original, that was it, the end of the world, it is believed the rebirth bit was added later). But it was also possible that the monsters could win, and there were some who were hoping for that. Of course the kids wanted to um, well, live (and hey, the rest of the world depended on that too) so they needed to do whatever they could to tip the balance so they would at least have a fighting chance against fate.
I haven't yet read Rick Riordan's take on Norse Mythology, that's next on my list, I wanted to read this one first in fact since Riordan seems to get all the acclaim (look back of the past several years on the Goodreads Choice Awards, he always wins). To be fair, I LOVE Riordan's stuff but gave this one a chance before it could be compared, and it did really well in the end. If you like modern takes on old myths, this one is worth a read.
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