After finishing up two audiobooks that I already know are contenders for best of the year I needed a change of pace. Something relaxing, that wouldn’t attempt to compare to the last two. Enter Mr. Gaiman reading his new collection of Norse Mythology. It was exactly what I needed.
Mr. Gaiman starts with the Norse creation myth, and from there spreads out picking and choosing to tell fun and interesting tales involving Odin, Thor, and Loki most of the time.There’s the usual cast of characters including gods, goddesses, dwarves, and giants (and frost giants). He even ends it telling of the future and Ragnarok. My favorite story of the bunch was explaining how the gods got their most prized possessions: Odin’s ring, Freyr’s boar, and Thor’s hammer. Loki, as with all tales, survives by the skin of his teeth, but it was delightful watching it all play out.
Overall it was the perfect palate cleanser as it required zero thought to listen to. While I don’t remember lots of details from this listen, that’s okay, as I can already tell this will be a multi-listen book. Especially when Mr. Gaiman is doing the narration his books are perfect to unwind to on the way home from work. My only complaint is that there are not enough stories about the goddesses, but that’s really less Mr. Gaiman’s fault and more history and time for not preserving them.
Anyways, this has already been reviewed quite a bit this year, so let me add my voice to the choir. Excellent little collection retelling classic mythology. And the audiobook with Mr. Gaiman’s soothing tones is totally worth it.
I think my favourite aspect of the story of how the gods get their greatest treasures is that it starts because Loki has, apparently just because he could, removed all of Sif’s hair, complete with the roots. And since this event, thanks to his lucky save, the Lady Sif apparently has hair made of REAL gold, i.e. metal strands, that grow out of her head like real hair. That must make for one heck of an Asgardian L’Oréal commercial.
I enjoyed how most of the stories were because Loki did something “just because”, and then had to get himself out of his scrape after the fact. But you’re also right, Lady Sif’s hair now must be the greatest hair commercial of all time.