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

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