Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Mist-Susan Krinard

Title: Mist
Author: Susan Krinard
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Format & Pages: Paperback, 382
Publication: Tor, 2013
Source: Borrowed
Rating:
“Mist lives a normal life. She has a normal job, a normal boyfriend, and a normal apartment in San Francisco. She never thinks about her past if she can help it.

She survived. That’s the end of it.

But then a snowy winter descends upon San Francisco. In quick succession, Mist is attacked by a frost giant in a public park and runs into an elf disguised as a homeless person on the streets…and then the man Mist believed was her mortal boyfriend reveals himself to be the trickster god Loki, alice and well after all these years.

The normal life for which Mist fought so hard is falling apart. But thankfully, Mist isn’t quite so normal herself. She’s a Valkyrie, and she’s going to need all her skill to thwart Loki’s schemes and save modern Earth from the ravages of a bottle of the gods.”


I must admit that when I read the back cover of Mist that I positively squealed with delight, resulting in me getting odd looks at the library. I love Norse mythology and while I do not know much about it, I have always been fascinated with it since high school. So I eagerly grabbed it from the new arrivals shelf and guarded it away from other readers.

On to the review. The story opens with a look into Mist’s past, during World War II. I thought this was a great introduction, as it endears the readers to Mist as well as to her situation. It gives her a background story without being an info dump. It drew me even farther into the story than I already was.

The plot is very intriguing. Krinard has set in motion a grand scale of events with many layers and depth. Things are not quite what they seem to be. There is this feeling of mystery throughout the novel that really keeps pulling you along. I was kept on my toes as I tried to piece together the puzzle.

The various levels of the novel definitely come from the complex characters that Krinard has created. Mist is the only character whose background is really known to the reader. Dainn, Ryan, even Loki himself, is shrouded in a cloud of inscrutability. We don’t find out some facts about the characters until the very end of the book. To make matters more cryptic, the inclusion of Freya and her communications with Dainn, really make this puzzle a hard one to solve.

The ending of the book is quite a shocker. Cliffhanger! Let me tell you I was not pleased with the fact that this book ended. I was really caught up in this one. The story seems like it is going to flow right into the next book, which I hope comes out very soon. I just love the world that was created and the characters that fill it.

The only real issue I had with it is that I had to look up some words, whether they be Norse or otherwise, that I did not understand. Most of these words I was not able to infer their meaning, so that detracted from the reading a bit. Besides that, this was a knockout story.

2 comments:

  1. I've seen this one around and I'm very interested in it. The mythological blend sounds amazing. :D So glad to hear you enjoyed it so highly.

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    Replies
    1. The blending was amazing. Everything fit so seamlessly. It is definitely something I would highly recommend.

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