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

VINYL RESTING PLACE - Olivia Blacke

Image
 Juni Jessup and her two sister, Tansy and Maggie, have gone into business together in their hometown of Cedar River, Texas, opening a combination record store and coffee shop. Vinyl LPs are making a comeback after all, despite critics thinking the medium was dead.  But speaking of 'dead' ... finding a dead body in the supply closet just as they are looking to have a grand opening is not part of the plan.  Juni's life gets more complicated when their uncle, Calvin, already a suspect in the murder, disappears. And the police officer leading the investigation is Juni's EX-boyfriend (who passive-aggressively keeps putting himself back into her life). Convinced that her uncle would never murder anyone, Juni sets out to prove his innocence - which isn't easy since he's making himself look guilty - because Calvin is family and family is EVERYthing to Juni. As readers of my blog know, I'm not a big fan of most cozy mysteries, but the setting caught my eye and my in...
Read more

THE WALLED CITY - Ryan Graudin

Image
  Jin and her sister, Mei Yee, were taken and sold and then sent to the lawless Walled City to serve as prostitutes or slaves to anyone willing to pay. Jin managed to escape her captivity, but not the Walled City and she now lurks about, disguised as a boy and is trying to track down the brothel where her sister is still captive. Jin will work odd delivery jobs to earn a small bit of money and hopefully have a legitimate means of coming in contact with her sister's captors.  This is how she meets up with Dai, a mysterious boy who has somehow managed to avoid running with any of the gangs in the city but he seems to have his own unusual connections, which Jon could desperately use if she has any hope of finding Mei Yee. But Dai has his own desperate needs.  The story is told from the different perspectives of each character and we do bounce around quite a bit as the chapters are generally short. This never bothered me, which is slightly unusual as often I find this techni...
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 - ...
Read more