adastrame's reviews
263 reviews

My one-sentence summary of this book: Norse Mythology inspired X-Men, but with extra sex. This book starts out strong (which is one of the reasons why I picked it up), but towards the middle it became super difficult for me to finish, as I found the story very much unengaging. The book was also another reason for me to realize that romance is just not my genre - it just felt cringe to me most of the time, especially considering all the other stuff that was going on in the plot. 

The worldbuilding was great though, and seemed very accurate to me as a long-time fan of the Norse myths. 

I really enjoyed the characterization of Murderbot here, and as a socially awkward person, I can empathize with a lot of this. However, I expected to like the book a lot more than I did, and thus was kinda let down. I guess the plot didn't captivate me enough, and I often felt my mind wandering while reading this.

I have read this book about 20 years ago in German. After reading Piranesi, I felt it's time for a re-read in the language it was meant to be read in. My experience was very similar: the book has fascinating world-building and is truly *magical*, but at times it's just unbearably slow and full of what feels like filler to me. It would have been a 5/5 with a more focused, less meandering story over 500-600 pages, as opposed to 1006. It only reall gets *exciting* in the last 100 or so pages. I still really like it, and I will definitely re-watch the TV adaptation now as well. 

I enjoyed this sequel to Mythos much more than its predecessor, probably because it tells a much more coherent narrative (or tries to, at least). Mythos was sometimes random and allover the place and hard to follow. This book, however, focuses on a number of Greek heroes and tells their stories in a more or less coherent manner (but still, these myths are very convoluted and intertwined). 

I learned A LOT from reading this book. Most of my knowledge of Greek mythology was superficial, and this really helped me to get a deeper picture of these myths, and especially of how they still shape our society, and very much also our language. 

I have first read this book when I was about 17 years old, which is now more than 20 years ago. Back then, I became interested primarily because of the movies, which were released around that time, and I had a friend who was a big fan. 

Back then I was absolutely not mature or educated enough to appreciate these books for what they are. I thought they were rather tedious and boring to read, and I found the language that they use very, very odd. However, I'm fairly sure that I read the books in German back then, which probably is partially why I thought the language in the books was super weird. 

Fast forward 20 years. I have watched the movies at least 15 times and they remain absolute masterpieces of modern cinema. After my last re-watch, I felt it's about time to read the books again, because I always had so many questions about the lore, and how things happen, etc. 

And what can I say, now that I'm 20 years wiser with a degree in English literature and linguistics, I have not a single doubt left in me that these books are absolute masterpieces. This is THE most fascinating and in-depth worldbuilding I have encountered anywhere in fiction. Every single main character has a backstory and a purpose. The language is absolutely superb. The elaborate explanations that I found tedious as a teenager I now found super interesting. 

Sometimes you just need to live life for a few decades to truly understand and appreciate something.