In this inventive, short, yet perfectly formed novel inspired by traditional Norse mythology, Neil Gaiman takes readers on a wild and magical trip to the land of giants and gods and back.
In a village in ancient Norway lives a boy named Odd, and he's had some very bad luck: His father perished in a Viking expedition; a tree fell on and shattered his leg; the endless freezing winter is making villagers dangerously grumpy.
Out in the forest Odd encounters a bear, a fox, and an eagle—three creatures with a strange story to tell.
Now Odd is forced on a stranger journey than he had imagined—a journey to save Asgard, city of the gods, from the Frost Giants who have invaded it.
It's going to take a very special kind of twelve-year-old boy to outwit the Frost Giants, restore peace to the city of gods, and end the long winter.
A hardback copy of, "Odd and the Frost Giants" will be released September 2009, for those of you who keep every copy of everything you buy on your shelves.
This review is for the paperback import, which in addition to being really cool, has the U.K. pricing on the cover--mine also had the price, "...if sold in Ireland," stamped on the front. It's always good to know what something will cost in Ireland.
A re-telling of several Norse myths*, this is a good children's story that is appropriate for all ages; it's not even remotely scary, although it is thoroughly entertaining.
It's also full of lines like, "Oh, you mean the talking animal thing. Happens all the time." In fact it made me wonder how many of the one-liners in, "Good Omens" that I had thought were Pratchettisms were actually Gaimanisms.
A funny, fast read, this is well worth picking up if you're an adult or a child fan of Neil Gaiman.
*See Gaiman's Amazon reading list title, "The Norse Myths", by Kevin Crossley-Holland.
No doubt some people will be thinking, "I've never heard of this!" which is understandable. Odd and the Frost Giants is a very slim (100 illustrated pages of reasonably big type) book that Neil Gaiman wrote for World Book Day last year. A whole bunch of copies turned up in my local Waterstones' YA department and at just £1 I decided it was worth a look.
The book follows the adventures of young Odd, a Viking boy whose father dies when he is young and he is crippled by a falling tree shortly thereafter. When a devastatingly bad winter afflicts his community, Odd takes refuse in his father's woodcutter hut, and meets an eagle, a bear and a fox. Things then take a very unexpected turn and Odd finds he has a problem to sort out with some very large people with a chilly disposition...
Odd and the Frost Giants is a very fast read, but it's still a lot of fun. This is Gaiman at his most playful and approachable, with none of the real darkness of his adult work (although occasional flashes show that Odd's life is not a happy one), but it works well for that. Those who enjoyed his depiction of Norse mythology in both Sandman and American Gods will also be interested in seeing him revisit the concept here in a much briefer form.
There isn't much more to say - this review is an appreciable percentage of the length of Odd itself - other than that this is a fast, entertaining read where Gaiman grabs the reader's attention and spins a fine yarn indeed
Odd and the Frost Giants (****) is no longer in print, but copies can be found Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com, although copies in the US can be pricey for such a slim tome.
I first heard about this book on Neil Gaiman's blog, when he talked about writing a book for Britain's World Book Day, an event in which writers and publishers donate their time and resources to create budget-priced books to help school age kids discover the joy of reading. I have to admire Neil for offering his time and talent to a wonderful project like this and I caught myself wishing I lived in Britain so I could get my hands on a copy easily. But thanks to Amazon, I was blessed to obtain this little gem, though not after two or three false starts when someone beat me to a budget-priced copy.
But the false starts were definitely worth it and besides its rarity, I can see why people are jumping to get this book. I think this is one of Neil's best books so far, on a par with his great works like "The Sandman Comics" and "American Gods". The tale itself is a classic Gaiman-esque revamp of a Norse myth, in which a young boy helps Odin, Thor and Loki out of a hairy situation when a Frost Giant steals Thor's hammer and Freya, the goddess of spring, thus plunging Midgard into a winter that just won't end. But this time, the young boy is a fully developed character, a crippled youngster named Odd whose cleverness and cheerfulness balance out his disability and helps him help the gods outwit the Frost Giant. The tone has a definite story-telling quality to it, and while it's clearly aimed for a young audience, older readers will enjoy it for its refreshingly knowing innocence (and one bit where the characters refer to Loki shape-shifting into a mare will get a chuckle out of older readers who know Norse myth).
