CHILDREN OF RAGNAROK - Cinda Williams Chima


 The problem with being an ancient god, even a Norse one, is that people stop believing in you are your power.  

It is a thousand years after Ragnarok and the magic that the gods once wielded is dying out. Reggin is a young woman with some power but she is enslaved to Asger, a powerful fire demon being.  Her life is rough and she fights just to survive.  Eirik Halvorsen hasn't had things much easier. When his parents died, he and his sister were left in the care of their step-father - an angry, abusive man who now wants to take control of the Halvorsen land. But Eirik fights this, even going to court. In the settlement, he now will have one year to set sail and find a lost land. If he fails his stepfather gets the property.

Eirik will meet Reggin on his journey and help her to escape her enslavement and she will head to a land that might still have magic left in it.  Is there any magic that will help Eirik maintain control of the family farm?

I am definitely a sucker for anything with the Nordic mythology in it so it's pretty clear why I was attracted to this book. Author Cinda Williams Chima is unfamiliar to me, but it appears she has a number of epic-style fantasy series' so I was definitely looking forward to a strong book.  The title, The Children of Ragnarok, is really great, suggesting youngsters as the next generation - the starting over after the end of everything. Even the description as provided by the publisher suggests as much.

But I didn't feel that's what we were getting.  

Our story centers around three youth - the very human Eirik, his sister (or 'systir' as Chima writes it) Liv, and the thrall-with-magic-abilities Reggin. The problem with an epic fantasy is that you need either a really epic quest/journey or strong characters that you really want to root for. Hopefully both.

Here, our characters are a bit too on the mundane side. Reggin has the more interesting backstory and abilities but Eirik is more relatable but his story is a bit common. And the quest ...?  We don't really get that until quite late in the book. Eirik's task, which would seem to be our quest, is a bit undefined and the stakes don't really seem that high.

I struggled to stay interested and didn't find the connection to being the children of Ragnarok.  Is there more to come in the next book?  I hope so.

Looking for a good book? Children of Ragnarok by Cinda Williams Chima is an epic Nordic fantasy that doesn't quite have that epic-ness we're hoping for.

I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher, through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

3 stars

* * * * * *

Children of Ragnarok

author: Cinda Williams Chima

series: Runestone Saga #1

publisher: Balzer & Bray

ISBN: 9780063018686

hardcover, 536 pages

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

MURDLE VOLUME 1 - G. T. Karber

Image
 I enjoy puzzles of many different varieties. I had not heard of 'Murdle' before this but essentially this is a combination of the game of Clue and a Sherlock Holmes micro story. With suspects, possible murder weapons, potential locations, and/or motives plus some very brief hints, readers are meant to combine the logic of what's know with deductive reasoning to identify the killer (or killers?) in 100 different mystery word puzzles. I will admit right off the bat that I did not do all 100.  I didn't even do half of these, but I did so some random sampling through all the categories (Elementary, Occult Medium, Hard Boiled, and Impossible). I did not get any correct in the Impossible category (of course not ... they were impossible!) and only one correct in the Hard Boiled (of five). The Elementary puzzles were, as expected, pretty easy and the Hard Boiled only a little bit more difficult. Each mini mystery comes with a grid printed in the book to help the reader-detecti
Read more

THE YOUNGER GODS - Michael R. Underwood

Image
 Jacob Greene is a child of cultists - extremists with a deep connection to powerful gods.  To stay in good favor and receive great powers from these gods Jacob's family (both biological family and cult group family) must occasion a sacrifice now then. Jacob doesn't seem to question this (it's how he's been raised, after all) until the time he brings his best friend home to be brutally sacrificed. Jacob believes that his friend is a willing participant, honored to be chosen, informed of what was about to take place by Jacob's father.   Of course nothing could be further from the truth and the friend does NOT go willingly. This shatters Jacob's belief and has him question his faith and he leaves his family and cult in order to think things through. But it's not easy to escape powerful gods, and despite being in the city of New York, all signs point to the fact that the gods know where he is and that something big is about to go down. Although the description
Read more

THE RAVEN THIEF - Gigi Pandian

Image
 With Tempest Raj now a member of the company, Secret Staircase Construction (a company who, as their title suggests, builds mystery-themed, secret rooms inside homes) has finished their first job. Their client now wants to celebrate to kick off her new beginning - new home and new life now that she's divorced from her cheating ex-husband, famous mystery author Corbin Colt. First up, a mock séance to remove any trace of Corbin from the property, led by Tempest's friend, Sanjay.   But during that séance, while all those gathered sat in a dark room holding hands, Corbin's dead body crashes the party, falling across the table in front of everyone. There were eight people in the room, and they were all holding hands, but all the evidence points to one of them being the murderer.  Suspicions point to Ash, Tempest's grandfather, because he was the only one with Corbin's blood on him. Of course, as a doctor, he was also the only one who checked on the body - wherein he acq
Read more