Norse Mythology by British author (and subsequently British Jesus) Neil Gaiman tells fifteen tales from Norse Mythology (who would’ve guessed) and translates them into comprehendible stories for the masses to read at night before their trip to sleepy time junction instead of weird poems and songs that even google translate is useless at making the poems seem half-comprehendible and to do so you need to venture to the unkept hellish catacombs known only as bing translate (shudder) to catch a glimpse at any sort of meaning, and thus giving another reason to call Gaiman British Jesus and not ‘that British author that some people like because ooo he’s kind of good with words and the Sandman stuff was cool as well’.

Anyway, let’s bring our attention back to the book, and you’ll find your favourite people you know from those ‘obscure’ Marvel movies like Odin, Thor and Loki as the titular main characters. (Disclaimer: this is the part of the review when I compare the book to the Marvel adaptations because [a] I find it interesting and [b] if I’m not appealing to some sort of mainstream audience then what’s the point?) In the book, Thor is much more of an air-headed brute who isn’t sober at anytime and also has an awesome red beard, and isn’t the dreamy, manic pixie ‘i’m going to sit in a lake without a shirt because my body is beautiful and you should know it’ Chris Hemsworth that those films portray him as. Thor is stupid and loves his hammer and that’s it. Barely any layers of character. Even my wrinkled-up, old xenophobic neighbour from my childhood who was scared of the devil taking him back to the Vietnam war and women voting had more going on inside his head than Thor. If Thor doesn’t get his way, then *stupid comic onomatopoeia* that problem now has a huge, hammer-shape hole in it.

Loki is pretty much the same. Starts off as a trickster, akin to an older brother figure you find in every children’s slice-of-life novel. However, instead of being an actual evil presence due to being a frost giant (spoilers for anyone who hasn’t watched or read Thor by now), he’s evil because one day he killed the most beautiful god and then he got drunk and roasted everyone (hello fellow millennials i’m feeling really radical today by using all the dopest lingo; Y. O. L. O. ) and apparently no one could handle it anymore, so they tied him down to a mountain and let a snake drip poison onto his eyes. Also Loki is described as a man with a ‘twisted face’, a saying that is flattering to only the elephant man, who really takes only half-well (just kidding, he’s dead). On the other hand, look at Tom Hiddleston. And then a little bit more. Then look at a clock. It’s been two hours and you should probably get a restraining order. I should probably get a restraining order too, for sidetracking off the review.

But you probably don’t read it for the characters. If you do, there’s a glossary of them at the back. But characters don’t mean anything without context. And the context means story. And the stories in this are absurdist at best. Apparently, you can’t go to Norse heaven for believing in peace. Peace is for the pusillanimous. Heaven is for people who died bravely and valiantly in battle. So forget Jesus and instead insult North Korea publicly if you want to go to heaven. (I don’t encourage you to lose any faith that you have and instead ramble to North Korea on twitter, somehow. It’s a joke.) On the other hand, Hell is for the sane. More specific stories is when Loki got his mouth sown shut for losing a bet, Thor drinking the sea, lessening the effects of climate change, the time Thor cross-dressed to get married to a giant and get his hammer back (which is a weird story until you realise that some of the Nordic countries are Sweden, Norway and Denmark, which are known for their bleeding liberal hearts with off-centred crosses painted on).

And then there is Ragnarok. The book alludes to Ragnarok a fair bit, ending most of the chapters with some variation of ‘but it all changed when Ragnarok happened.’ Ragnarok is doomsday, the apocalypse, the end of nigh. Everyone dies, pretty much. Odin, king of the gods, gets eaten by a wolf, who was the son of Loki and a giantess somehow. Don’t question it.

Personally, I enjoyed the book. I enjoy British Jesus’ writing style and I’ve always had a knack for mythology, whether that be from the Norse or Pokemon. This book doesn’t have any morals, or any real reason to exist. It’s a book that allows you to go into the world of hundreds of years ago, where the first king of Sweden allegedly died looking for a place to piss and every educated person believed the world was flat and the night sky was just the inside of a skull. It’s a book made for dumb fun.

So, if you want to appear smarter than you really are whenever your friends, or in my case, acquaintances (sniff), mention the marvel Thor, read Norse Mythology by British Jesus I mean Neil Gaiman, and then have less friends (or acquaintances) due to you're newly found smart-person-snobbiness. 3/5