I’ve got a little scattershot in my reading recently, abandoning my “one from the beginning, one from the end” policy. Not sure why completely, and I will get back to it, but I picked some quick wins between potentially harder reads and then just fancied catching up with this sequel, which you might spot half way along the front shelf in the TBR pic (you might be shocked by the pile I’ve pulled off to read next, which you’ll get to read about on Tuesday!)

Joanne M. Harris – “The Testament of Loki”

(June 2018 – from Annabel)

Annabel from Annabookbel sent me this one after I expressed interest on reading her blog post about DNF’ing it, and it’s fair to say I enjoyed it more than she did. The sequel to “The Gospel of Loki“, this one starts out with our narrator, Loki just after Ragnarok, chained in a terrible prison with the World Serpent and trying to work out how to escape. Using humans’ ‘dream’, which now includes the Internet, he makes it into a multiplayer online game called Asgard! and thence into the body of Jumps, a 17 year old woman who has various issues that might or might not be made worse by sharing her body with an ancient Norse god. It’s a nice, inclusive book with same sex relationships and different ethnicities plus a wheelchair user all treated as completely normal and not existing as plot points, just being there (the love interest being used as a human shield is a plot point but it doesn’t matter who that love interest is, if you see what I mean).

Harris has her plot worked out carefully and it seems to work, hinging on working out just who has come through the portal into which bodies, and although I did get a bit confused when the plot got hectic, I enjoyed the worlds-collide theme involved in Loki learning about modern human culture and the infiltration of kindness and empathy into his mind.

I’m not sure I’ll worry about any further sequels, but did enjoy this quick read. Thanks, Annabel!