The Gospel of Loki is Norse Myth told from Loki’s point of view, and wow, is it entertaining. It’s not a romance since Loki pretty much shits on everyone who loves him and then is all “Why meeeeeeee?” But it’s relevant to our interests because even though it is NOT closely related to Loki as played by our beloved Tom Hiddleston, the two share a similar voice, and it’s pretty darn fun to picture this book, which has first person narration, being narrated by The Hiddles. And once you get through the first chapters, which are full of really dense origin stuff, the story is a ton of fun.

Loki is “Wildfire incarnate – a true son of Chaos.” Odin, who has big ambitions, convinces Loki to become corporeal and to live in Asgard, because Odin needs an ally who is able to do the morally ambiguous things that Odin can’t be caught doing. Loki finds that being free from the rule of Lord Surt, the lord of Chaos, is great, but serving Odin is a mixed bag:

There were a few compensations to having corporeal Aspect. Food (jam tarts were my favorites), drink (mostly wine and mead), setting things on fire, sex (Although I was still extremely confused by all the taboos surrounding this-no animals, no siblings, no men, no married women, no demons-frankly, it was amazing to me that anyone had any sex at all, with so many rules against it).

There was also sleep, which I enjoyed, and flying above the battlements in hawk Aspect (and occasionally shedding a well-aimed load onto Heimdall’s golden armor as he stood watch on Bif-rost). This, I discovered, was humor, another new sensation for me-and in its way even better than sex, although here again, it was hard to know where to draw the limits.

 

I love it that Loki counts “setting fire to things” as a plus of being corporeal.

Loki also finds that he really doesn’t fit in at Asgard. He does make friends, but he has a hard time keeping them. Turns out people are both grateful and super grossed out that he tricks a stonemason who relies on help from his giant stallion by transforming himself into a mare and subsequently having an eight-legged pink colt for a son. Confused?  Allow me to explain. See, Asgard is made of wood but a stonemason shows up and says that he can make a shiny new Asgard- but he sets a high price. Loki tells the Gods not to worry about this and he tells the mason that the mason can have his price but only if he completes the new Asgard in a certain amount of time. The mason accepts the deal and turns out to have an ace up his sleeve: a giant stallion that hauls amazing loads of stone. At the very last minute, just before Asgard is completed, Loki transforms himself into a mare and lures the stallion off the job. Asgard is 99.99% done, the mason gets nothing, and Loki has an eight-legged colt baby.  That’s how Loki is – no honesty, no taboos, and probably had a pretty good time.

Much of the book involves individual stories in which he gets into various scrapes, or solves problems for Odin, or goes on an ill-advised but highly amusing road trip with Thor (who is huge and, according to Loki, not very bright). Sometimes Loki is in favor and sometimes out of favor, but he’s always building up resentments and thinking of the end game – Ragnarok, the end of days, when sides have to be chosen. Loki is very, very invested in being on the winning side.

Things are complicated for Loki because as he becomes more involved with his fellow Asgardians, he starts to feel things like trust and affection and companionship (he, of course, claims that he does not, but he doth protest too much). This makes him even crankier, particularly when he feels rejected or betrayed. He’s constantly trying to puzzle out the meaning of a prophesy that seems to suggest that Odin will betray him, although, as Loki himself says, “Never trust an Oracle.”

The Gospel of Loki has nothing to do with Marvel’s Loki – this book is about Norse mythology, not The Avengers. Yes, I know that the Loki we know and adore from The Avengers is also inspired by Norse mythology, but very, very loosely, whereas this story is full on Norse myth with some original stuff by Harris to fill in gaps and enrich the characters.

Harris’ Loki has a different origin, different motives, and even looks different from Tom Hiddleston’s Loki (Harris’ has red hair, for one thing). Harris is quite justly annoyed that so many people seem to think that she’s somehow exploiting Marvel, especially since she wrote her first Loki book in 2007, four years before Marvel’s Loki made his first screen appearance, and has written about her struggles with sexist dismissals of her books.

That being said, it’s so easy to hear this book in Tom Hiddleston’s voice. The only thing the two Lokis have in common is an incredible reservoir of charm. Harris’ Loki does terrible things and yet you just kind of have to love him. He’s so very roguish that you root for him to be OK, and he’s also so very scummy that when he suffers you know he richly deserves it. Plus some of his evil exists because he comes from Chaos, and some is from hurt feelings so he’s sort of huggable, although the women in his life who try to redeem him with hugs and cake learn the hard way that this is not effective. This means that when Loki is doing horribly, it’s satisfying because he’s getting his comeuppance, and when he’s doing well it’s satisfying because we sort of want him to be happy even though he’s clearly evil, and all along you sort of want to feed him cake.

This is especially funny since he ends up with a wife, Sigyn, who does feed him cake. She solves everything with cake, and it drives him completely bonkers. It’s such a funny and cutting subversion of the “love of a good woman” trope (and, alas, it’s not romantic at all). Of course it’s also all from Loki’s point of view, and Loki dismisses goodness and kindness out of hand, so maybe someday we’ll have a Gospel of Sigyn. IF we’re lucky, it will include cake recipies.

This book won’t please everyone – Loki really is just awful and some people might be so appalled by his behavior (and rightly so) that the book won’t feel funny to them. I have very little patience with an anti-hero, but this book was so clever and dryly funny that I enjoyed it immensely. Loki is terrible and you are clearly meant to find him terrible, but he’s also tragic and charismatic and compelling. He’s a trickster, like Coyote, who becomes involved in big level events. He’s a pretty complex character and you truly never know what he’ll do – except that it will almost always be dishonest, it will be aimed at his own self-preservation, and it will never, ever be dull.