Giants of the Frost by Kim Wilkins
2006, Grand Central Publishing, 544 pages
Review by @
I’d like to review – and recommend – a book for you. I do this with great trepidation because it is an unusual choice and my reasons for recommending it are even more unusual.
The book is Giants of the Frost by Kim Wilkins. It’s a bit of a girly book but it may well be worth it to overlook a few things to gain other benefits. The two main characters are Vidar and a mortal he loves, for the second time. Other characters include Odin, Thor, Heimdall, Loki, a delightful Vanir slave named Aud, the Norns, Vidar’s mother the giantess and a few strange wights and widgets. The setting spans the rainbow bridge from Asgard and Jotunheim to an island in the Norwegian Sea in Midgard. Chronologically it’s contemporary.
The magic for me lay in the descriptions of Asgard. Every time I read a chapter devoted to the characters there I had to lie down and take a nap and dream. I found the book to be a terrible inconvenience at work where I am allowed to read but sleeping is seriously frowned upon! The dreams were amazing and while I read the book I felt as though I were living in two worlds. My life in Asgard was as real as my life here.
While the author has a pretty good grasp on our Gods and their dramas I certainly didn’t agree with her in many regards. She depicts Odin as a totally corrupt spirit and gives Vidar a bit more to say than I would have – but I suppose that’s what happens when you make a silent god the hero of a novel, he’s got to say things now and then. Thor is depicted as one dimensional brutish and Heimdall is as well, but Vidar and Loki are very multidimensional and I was fond of them both, especially Loki whom I have an affinity for anyway.
I did have to wonder if perhaps her vision of Odin might not be true after a thousand years of no followers. A thousand years is a long time to be ignored. Might make me a bit cranky too. The other aspect I found interesting was that they made some mockery of us viewing them as gods. Perhaps they aren’t. Perhaps they are just another type of being in our vast and multidimensional universe.
There is much talk among Heathens about changing our world view from the good/evil dualistic paradigm of Christianity. This book did more to change my world view than literally a few thousand pages of the ideas of our peers. Because the author broke the “worship” mould for me by rendering the gods as vulnerable, flawed critters just of a different, albeit way more powerful, breed than me I was able to finally get off my knees and understand a symbiotic relationship with them, breaking that Christian meek and humble and guilty mode forever. So the author did my soul a great service.
But really, even beyond all that, the dreams! Everyday I was transported to Asgard and each day was more beautiful and wondrous than the one before it. My husband read it and even though, as I said, it’s a bit girlish, his dick didn’t fall off and his balls didn’t shrivel up and he actually enjoyed it. In fact, he apparently wants an Aud – the Vanir slave – of his very own.
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