So, friends, I’ve always had a soft spot for Norse mythology ever since I first read a pretty expurgated (i.e. Sigurd’s/Sinfjoetli’s twincesty parentage was glossed over!) version of the Volsunga Saga illustrated by Arthur Rackham when I was, like, 10 or 11. And I always liked Loki the best of the Norse pantheon because, unlike just about everyone else in that group, he used brains, rather than heavy weapons, to solve problems.
For a while, I read tons of novels based on Norse mythology and then I thought I was basically over the whole thing, and … then I fell in love with the MCU versions of Thor/ Loki/ Odin/ Frigga, etc., but especially with Loki (:D) and so all my dormant love for those stories/characters got a huge surge of new energy; in the past month or so, I’ve been re-reading old favorites like Eight Days of Luke, and American Gods, and on a whim, I also picked up Runemarks, by Joanne Harris (author of Chocolat, which some of you may remember was made into a lovely film starting Johnny Depp and Juliet Binoche), which I finally read today.
And folks, as Stephen Colbert likes to say, as of tonight, I have a new favorite version of Loki. For some reason, this book is marketed as YA (maybe because Maddy Smith, the heroine, is fourteen when the book opens) but it’s a fantastic and compelling read for adults too. (I read all 572 pages TODAY because I couldn’t put it down and I’m forcing myself not to start the sequel, Runelight, tonight, or else I know I’ll be up till 4 a.m.)
So, I love Maddy, Odin, and vicious, remorseless Skadi in this, but my absolutely favorite thing about this book is Loki, who is charming, mischievous, tricky, resentful, self-serving, and bratty, but also brave, and sometimes heroic, albeit usually dragged into random acts of heroism by someone else (mostly Maddy) and did I mention charming?
Some quotes because I JUST LOVED this book SO MUCH:
“Chaos was in my blood, they said- but they were happy enough to use my talents when it suited them. They despised deceit, hated lies, but were content to enjoy the fruits of them…When Odin took me in,” Loki went on, “he knew exactly what I was. Wildfire that cannot be tamed. So what if I slipped my leash a couple of times? I saved their skins more often than any of them knew. No one was grateful. And in the end” -once more Loki gave his crooked but oddly charming smile- “in the end, who betrayed whom?”
Loki is resentful and angry, just as he should be:
“The Æsir!” Unexpectedly her words had struck home; for a moment Loki’s eyes flared with unfeigned anger. His colors flared too, from ghostly violet to fiery red. “All they ever did was use me when it suited them. When there was trouble, it was always Please, Loki, think of something. Then when it was over, it was Back to your kennel, without so much as a thank-you. I was always a second-class citizen in Asgard, and not one of them ever let me forget it.”
But he also enjoys mischief for its own sake:
"Loki grinned. In a fair fight he knew he had no chance; but Loki was not accustomed to fighting fair, and had no intention of starting now.”
Or:
“There’s an old Northlands saying that goes like this: When lies don’t help. try telling the truth. Loki knew it well, of course, but preferred his own version, which was: When lies don’t help, tell better lies.”
Plus, Harris’s Odin, who is Loki’s blood-brother (as in mythology) not his adoptive father (as in MCU canon), is also kind of great!! (And a bit manipulative as well.)
Since the beginning of the Elder Age, Loki had helped the gods only inasmuch as he’d usually caused the trouble in the first place. And yet hadn’t Odin himself known this from the start? And in his arrogance, hadn’t he always been shamefully eager to blame Loki for his own mistakes?
(Well, yeah, it does seem like Odin definitely used Loki to get stuff without paying fairly for it – in the myth cycle, I think Loki even gets Thor’s hammer for him – and then acting like he had nothing to do with the mischief!)
EVERYONE, YOU SHOULD READ THIS BOOK AND TALK ABOUT IT WITH ME!!!! (Please?) Seriously, it is so good!
Thanks to “Thor”/”Avengers”, etc., I cannot imagine anyone but Tom Hiddleston playing Loki, but Harris’s version of him is red-haired and green-eyed, so it has to be a ginger version of MCU’s Loki. So, basically, this is what I saw in my head the entire time I was reading :
I can’t imagine him playing Loki, but I agree with the rest!
The Light in the Sky 