Mike Vasich has a lifelong obsession with stories about gods, superheroes, and giant monsters, and he has been inflicting them on 7th and 8th graders for the better part of 20 years. He wrote his first book, Loki, so he could cram them all into one book and make them beat up on each other. He enjoys (fictional) mayhem, sowing disrespect for revered institutions, and taking naps.
If you’ve going to read Loki, you probably want to pick this one up first. Crossley-Holland gives an immensely well-written retelling of the classic Norse myths that provided the major framework for my own books about Loki. If you’re read myths before, you know they can be a tad dry sometimes, usually due to a lack of personality on the part of the characters. They are usually presented as archetypes, which is cool enough, but lacks a narrative punch. Crossley-Holland presents them in a slightly more modern narrative, which brings the characters to life. My rooting for Loki helped form the kernel for my own version.
The title is taken from the John Milton poem, Paradise Lost: “Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav'n,” and tells the story of the War in Heaven before the Creation from the point of view of the bad guys. So basically, we get the Devils’ (not a typo, by the way) point of view, and, like in Milton (arguably), they are the heroes of the story. Instead of the classic two-dimensional villains who exist solely to oppose the hero, Brust flushes them out so well that you can’t help but root for them. Nor can you understand why anybody would like this God dude or his weird ‘son’, Jesus. The devils in question are Satan and Lucifer, curiously split into two characters for this story, which provides further opportunities for plot and character development.
Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos novels (Dragon) and his swashbuckling tales of Khaavren (THE PHOENIX GUARDS and FIVE HUNDRED YEARS AFTER) have earned him an enthusiastic audience worldwide. But TO REIGN IN HELL, his famous novel that does for the epic of Satan's rebellion what Roger Zelazny's Lord of Light did for Hindu myth, has been out of print for years - causing used copies to trade for improbable sums. Now, at last, TO REIGN IN HELL returns to print in a paperback edition, with an introduction by Roger Zelazny.
A World Fantasy Award winner and the first novel by this genre-crossing author who is probably most famous for his sci-fi epic, Hyperion, Song of Kali is a dark fantasy/horror novel about a cult that worships the Hindu goddess/demon, Kali, who is known as a goddess of death, among other things. Kali doesn’t really make much of an entrance, but Simmons weaves an intriguing tale tinged with the supernatural, centered around a mystical poet who may or may not be dead. Simmons loves integrating poetry and poets into his stories, and the suspense around this particular poet and his connection to the cult of Kali is palpable. It’s not mythology per se, but boy is it dark. It’s also pretty short, and easily could be consumed in a single reading.
Calcutta, a monstrous city of immense slums, disease and misery, is clasped in the foetid embrace of an ancient cult. At its decaying core is the Goddess Kali: the dark mother of pain, four-armed and eternal, her song the sound of death and destruction. Robert Luczak has been hired by a New York magazine to find a noted Indian poet who has reappeared, under strange circumstances, years after he was thought dead. But nothing is simple in Calcutta, and before long Luczak's routine assignment turns into a nightmare ... it is rumoured that the poet has been brought back to…
Like To Reign in Hell, this is a retelling of a classic story from the viewpoint of the "villain". In this case, the classic story is Beowulf, and the villain is, of course, Grendel. This was another book that made me want to do a revision of the Loki myth, but Grendel is a different kind of character than Loki, Satan, or Lucifer. To start with, he’s a monster, so there isn’t tons of introspection. But it’s fascinating to see him as the victim when he’s really nothing more than a monster or a force of nature in the original story. He eats a bunch of thanes and then gets his arm ripped off by the epic hero, Beowulf. Grendel actually ends at that point in the novel, so most of it takes place prior to the disarming. Gardner was a writing teacher before his untimely death, and Grendel is a tad on the ‘literary’ side, but if you like misunderstood bad guys, it’s definitely worth a read.
This classic and much lauded retelling of Beowulf follows the monster Grendel as he learns about humans and fights the war at the center of the Anglo Saxon classic epic.
"An extraordinary achievement."—New York Times
The first and most terrifying monster in English literature, from the great early epic Beowulf, tells his own side of the story in this frequently banned book. This is the novel William Gass called "one of the finest of our contemporary fictions."
This is not a read for the religiously fragile. It’s the most subversive novel about the notion of the Judeo-Christian God that I’ve ever read. The premise is that God is dead and his massive corpse--two miles long!--has fallen into the ocean. A disgraced supertanker captain à la Captain Hazelwood of the Exxon Valdez is hired by the archangel Raphael to tow his corpse to a massive hollowed-out glacier in the Arctic for entombment. But of course, the corpse is decomposing as they drag it along, and the crew suffers much existential angst as the journey unfolds. Hilarious and compelling religious satire, and also a World Fantasy Award winner. Towing Jehovah is followed by two optional sequels that are a bit darker, but worth a read if you like this one.
On his 50th birthday, Anthony Van Horne meets the despondent angel Raphael, who tells him that God is dead, his body in the sea; and that Van Horne must captain the supertanker that will now tow the two-mile-long divine corpse northwards through the Atlantic. By the author of "City of Truth".
God of Mischief. Father of Lies. Harbinger of Destruction. Exiled and tortured by the gods, Loki swears vengeance. He will summon the mighty Fenris Wolf and the legendary Midgard Serpent, and they will lead an army of giants and all the dead in Niflheim. Brimming with the power of the most destructive being in the Nine Worlds, he will not rest till Asgard is in ashes and all the gods are dead under his heel.
He’s riddled with guilt. She’s annoyed with the status quo.
The death of a crime boss’s daughter forces Detective Neil Caldera to leave NYC. He seeks refuge in the tranquil embrace of a small town, where he finds himself entangled in the labyrinth of a teenage girl’s murder. Tess Fleishman’s pale skin and extreme weight loss portrays a disease she wants others to see. While inside, a compulsion for Neil fuels her passion to have him or destroy him.
He's riddled with guilt. She's annoyed with the status quo. The death of a crime boss's daughter forces Detective Neil Caldera to leave NYC. He seeks refuge in the tranquil embrace of a small town, where he finds himself entangled in the labyrinth of a teenage girl's murder. Tess Fleishman's pale skin and extreme weight loss portrays a disease she wants others to see. While inside, a compulsion for Neil fuels her passion to have him or destroy him. As Neil delves into the heart of the town's secrets, will truth deliver solace? Or will Tess prevail?
