Twilight of the Gods: A Novel

Twilight of the Gods is a dense story. The second book in the story of Grimnir, protector of the Raven-Geats in a greater war waging among gods, and a new priestess who finds her way in a fight of her own. It’s a book rich with detail to the point of weighing down the narrative, and the world-building is so elaborate as to cost the characters their believability. I would have liked to have seen more development of the characters and human connection as opposed to long descriptions of clothes, imagery, and battlefields. There’s a lot of telling, and the prose feels needlessly stiff as it tries to summon a bygone age. It’s predictable, with a heroine of sixteen summers old raging against authority who can’t get a handle on her anger and her relationship with her mentors who withhold vital information from her. It’s a hard book to connect with, even as a lover of history and mythology. It seems like a series where, if you liked it, it would be easy to get very involved. But it’s likely a title that readers either love or that leaves them cold, with not much in between.