van Eekhout, Greg: Norse Code
Norse Code (2009)
Written by: Greg van Eekhout
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Pages: 292
The week before this book was released, I checked my messages in my journal and noticed THREE different people promoting this book in their own blogs/LJs. THREE DIFFERENT PEOPLE. All of those people are authors I've read and enjoyed, and the cover art was so pretty that I decided to look into the book a little more. Now, I'll admit, the premise didn't do much for me, but at the time, reviewers on Amazon had given it nothing but five-star reviews, and I had to see what all of the fuss was about.
The premise: Ragnarok is just around the corner, and it's Mist's job to recruit soldiers for the Odin's army. A former MBA student who was murdered, she was brought back as a Valkyrie, but she can't focus on her job. She wants to journey to the land of Helheim and rescue her sister Lily from the clutches of the dead, and to do that, she needs the help of Norse God Hermod, who's the only person in heaven and Earth who's gone to Helheim and made it back alive. Hermod, meanwhile, is doing everything he can to stop Ragnarok from happening, but everything he does seems to bring it that much closer. Together, he and Mist team up do everything they can to save the world, but when the adversaries are gods and monsters and fate itself, it seems like a hopeless cause.
Review style: This is a book I can talk about on a general basis, without getting into plot specifics. So, no spoilers. It'll also be of the stream-of-conscious variety.
I'm going to blame the hype: this book didn't work for me. However, the reasons it didn't work for me are pretty clear.
This is a very visual, action-packed book. It's one of those that I read and wish I were watching a movie instead, and by that I mean I wish the book was the movie itself. That's how the book reads. The prose, while humorous in many spots, lacks the biting satire and tear-jerking humor of Terry Prachett (whom I'm admittedly not fond of anyway) and doesn't reach the poignant reflection of Neil Gaiman. It's no accident I refer to the two authors who penned the end-of-the-world classic Good Omens, although I was thinking more American Gods than Good Omens in terms of poignancy. It's somewhere in the middle of those two types of books. Also two types it finds itself in the middle of is Buffy-lit urban fantasy (pick any kick-ass heroine leading a UF series here) and the kind of urban fantasy, like American Gods and Someplace to be Flying that many readers don't recognize as urban fantasy thanks to the current market trend.
By trying to be both, the book becomes neither, so that was part of my problem while reading it. And maybe it's my fault for trying to shove it into a neat category of buffy-lit versus urban fantasy, into humorous fantasy versus thought-provoking. After all, the tale is solidly told, a good adventure, and stands on its own two feet. Why does it need to fit into the above mentioned categories?
In truth, it doesn't. But for some reason my brain likes putting books into categories, and when I can't do that, the book I'm reading better, in my mind, transcend the categories that are available, or I get grumpy.
So we can chalk that up to "blame it on the reader."
Another thing that didn't work for me were the multiple and several unnecessary POVs. I liked having Hugin's (the raven), Hermod's and Mist's, but I could've done without everyone else, as those were few and far between and scattered in such a way that reminded me of my movie analogy again: where we get a brief flash to what's going on in other parts of the world so we know how it's going to affect our heroes. I'm not a fan of this in fiction, so my complaint is part preference, but I think that, because the raven's POV managed to span both space and time, we could've ALWAYS used the ravens when peering into a POV that wasn't really necessary. Why give us Grimnir when we could have Hugin? Why Radgrid over Hugin? I liked how the ravens linked space and time and story, and I wish that could've been used more in the book.
The characters themselves I was rather ambivalent about. I like growth and change in characters, and we don't have that here (then again, it's an action-story). I like there to be a solid, emotional connection, I want there to be heart. This book touched on that in Mist's quest to save her sister, but really all of that got tossed aside for the sake of the much bigger picture of saving the world. In truth, I feel like given the epic scale of this story, van Eekhout (whose last name is too much fun to say) could've penned a trilogy, so we could've really gotten to know our hero and heroine, so we could've really connected and empathized with them, and so those characters could've really developed. So much felt crammed into the 292 pages, and the NorseCODE project was more or less a throw-away, despite the oh-so-clever title of the book. Also crammed in but not necessary (except in maybe giving us easy motivations for the characters actions) were the forced overtures of romantic relationships, which just weren't needed in this book and didn't fit in very well anyway, as I didn't buy said relationships nor did I think they needed to happen.
The hard thing, for me, about this book is that it relies so much on prophecy and fate, and the characters are trying to fight it, even though it's a futile gesture. Anyone who's fallen in love with the Terminator franchise knows that trying to fight the future can have a lot of heart in addition to the action-packed adventure, but the fact I'm using a movie analogy proves my earlier point about the book. For fiction, I would've liked to see something a little more clever, where the prophecies weren't quite as literal, and the gods and goddesses and monsters were either living and breathing on Earth and/or metaphors/symbols for what would really make the prophecy come true. Making it literal while still keeping Earth modern and realistic kept giving me whiplash, as I was flown from mythic realm to mythic realm to real world.
But then, I'm not telling this story, van Eekhout is, and obviously, this is what he wanted. What he wanted is entertaining enough, the pages fly by, and I'll give credit to the resolution of the book, because I had no idea how the characters were going to get out of that mess. But in the end, it's not the kind of book I personally want to read. It's a taste thing. The debut itself is promising, and I'll keep a half-an-eye on his work in the future, but it will sorely depend on what kind of story he's telling as to whether or not I'll give it another shot.
My Rating
Give It Away: it's not van Eekhout's fault that I read this book after reading the absolutely lovely and wonderful Santa Olivia. Anything I read after that would pale in comparison, and unfortunately for van Eekhout, I read Norse Code. Granted, it's really not my kind of book: it's action-packed with a very visual story, but it lacked heart, and the epic scale was so huge that I wish van Eekhout could've turned this into a trilogy instead of a single book so that we could've really gotten into the world and the characters more than we did. Another problem that's solely my fault is my lack of knowledge of Norse myth. What I know is vague, and I suspect if I knew more specifics I could appreciate the book more, and understand whatever clever devices van Eekhout toys with. But I know enough to know that I'm not in love with the myth, so really, this was the type of book that, despite the overwhelmingly positive hype, I should've left on the shelf. It's not you, van Eekhout, it's me. Writing-wise, it's a pretty solid debut that'll keep you guessing, and the pages turn so fast that you'll be halfway through the book and wonder how you got there.
Cover Commentary: the coloring, the art, this is a gorgeous cover. Except for one. glaring. thing: who in the HELL thought it would be a great idea to slap a white strip at the bottom of the cover to type in the author's name in a really boring, bold font? I mean, really? This looks like you had the cover finished and ready to go and then realized you FORGOT THE AUTHOR'S NAME and had to make quick fix with a typewriter, a blank sheet of paper, and glue. And my husband, WHO IS A GRAPHIC DESIGNER, winced when he saw the EPIC FAIL of the name placement. This is not design, that is crap. How hard is it to incorporate the author's name on the actual art itself, much like you did with the title? If the book were designed differently, with perhaps a white frame with the art in the center (like this), I'd be okay with it. But oh, this white strip is just a sad, sad blemish on an otherwise gorgeous cover.
