Children's Writer, Book Reviewer, Teacher, Artist
Thank the gods! It's my stop on the Loki Blog Tour today and I am thrilled to share a Q&A with Loki's muse here on Earth, Louie Stowell, which you can access from Asgard here. My review follows...
Move aside Wimpy Kid! Loki's here in Midgard as an eleven-year-old boy! What utter brilliance 'Loki: A Bad God's Guide to Being Good' is: blisteringly funny, heartfelt and addictively good fun. Louie Stowell has set-up a fantastic new series - I can almost hear the stampede of children rushing to get their hands on a copy!
First and foremost, text and image work like a thunderous dream. The conceit of having Loki write a diary which is checked on by an avatar of Odin is genius. The point scoring for being good adds both weight to the story and much hilarity as, erm, Loki doesn't do particularly well for most of the book. Stowell has done wonders to listen to the cosmos and channel Loki's mischievous, sometimes cruel, often brutally insightful voice, bringing him to life as an eleven-year-old boy, with all the added frustrations that you would expect. For all of Loki's lies, insults, schemes and complaints about Thor's farts, there are fantastically brave insights on capitalism, the questionable origins of museums and the tiresome structure of school life. Underneath Loki's troublesome nature we see the rawness of his heart, although it takes some time for him to discover it and I'm sure he'll still have to work on quite a lot in future books!
This is a fantastic book to devour like a feast fit for Odin. 'Loki: A Bad God's Guide to Being Good' is playful, intelligent and did I mention it's just so much fun? This is going to create a furore like Thor dropping his hammer into a library filled only with Wimpy Kid books. GET IT NOW! (This is me saying this and not just Loki insisting I do through Louie Stowell's representatives.) An absolute blast!
Thank you to Walker Books and Louie Stowell for giving me the chance to holler about this from the hills.