This book may have the finest cover I've seen for quite some time. It quite outshines the contents.

To be fair, there's nothing particularly wrong with the book. It's pleasant enough, a perfectly competent retelling - but competence is pretty much the sum of it. I've always been a big fan of Norse myth, and Loki is one of the most fascinating characters in that pantheon, so I was hoping for a bit more... but competence aside, I found Harris' retelling, well, superficial is I suppose the nearest word.

And the language... with such a cynical take on the story, I understand that the beautiful words so often associated with myth would be replaced by something a little more down-to-earth, but I have vague memories of Harris using lovely, sensuous language in "Chocolat" so I was hoping for a bit more of the same - and didn't get it.

Average.