Norse Code by Greg van Eekhout

Stop. Look closely. Look beyond the typically stylish urban fantasy cover (the one with the nicely built young woman holding her weapon of choice with an air of defiant competence). Look beyond the title that's both serious and punny. Inside, through pages inked with the shadows of ravens, you'll watch the long-foretold cataclysm of Ragnarok as it rolls in a relentless wave from the dry, gray plains of Hel to... the dry, black asphalt of a California parking lot. And if you're partial to Norse mythology or urban tales driven by fascinating characters and laser-crisp writing, you'll enjoy it. Verily, by Thor's hammer!

The product description/back cover summary nicely provides the premise for this novel, the debut of the gifted Greg van Eekhout. Not only has he forged ancient myth and modern culture into a cool, sleek alloy, he's done so with drama, conspiracy, humo... Read More

Norse Code by Greg Van Eekhout

The NorseCode genome project seemed to be a global corporate undertaking to gather DNA samples in hopes of tracing down Odin’s descendants. But college student Kathy Castillo finds out the truth the hard way when she is murdered and resurrected as the valkyrie, Mist. It turns out that NorseCode is actually the Old Gods’ front for recruiting soldiers to fight in the apocalyptic battle of Ragnarok.

Greg Van Eekhout's debut novel Norse Code was my first foray into urban fantasy, so I’m admittedly out-of-my-element. I did find Norse Code to be entertaining enough, but it really wasn’t my cup-of-tea.

Along with the characters being a little hokie, there seemed to be a few holes in the story. I’d think using a cover like “searching for Odin’s descents” would raise questions, rather than al... Read More

Kid vs. Squid by Greg van Eekhout

Kid vs. Squid, by Greg van Eekhout, is definitely a children’s fantasy. It comes in at a slim sub-200 pages (with pretty good-sized print) and doesn’t take much time with detailed description, rich character development, or intricate plotting. That isn’t a complaint; it’s just to say that Kid vs. Squid knows who its audience is, and while it won’t dumb things down or talk down to its readers, it also won’t stretch them. Keeping to relatively humble standards of that sort, it succeeds pretty solidly.

Middle-school age Thatcher has been sent to his Uncle Griswald’s in Las Huesas, California for the summer. The beach town is oddly empty of beach-goers and Uncle Griswald lives in a tiny “museum” filled with shrunken heads, ships in bottles, strangely shaped bodies, and a “What-is-it” box he isn’t supposed to l... Read More

The Boy at the End of the World by Greg van Eekhout

The Boy at the End of the World is a new children's fantasy by Greg van Eekhout, author of Kid vs. Squid. Like his first children's book, The Boy at the End of the World is aimed squarely at the 9-12 age group. In that vein, it speeds quickly along a pretty straightforward plotline, with few twists or diversions into details of setting or character. Its likable, if a bit pallid, main character is enlivened by his more interesting (and funny) companions, making it a mostly engaging if somewhat simplistic read.

The book opens with a bang, literally, as the boy — Fisher — awakens in the pod he’s been grown in. The pod is inside an Ark, built to hold the last humans as well as other species, until the Earth has healed enough from its mostly-human-caused deprivations to support life ag... Read More

Paper Cities by Ekaterina Sedia

Bring up urban fantasy nowadays and most readers will probably assume that you’re talking about such authors as Laurell K. Hamilton, Jim Butcher, Simon R. Green, Kim Harrison, Charlaine Harris, Sherrilyn Kenyon and so on, but in this new anthology from Senses Five Press, which is edited by Ekaterina Sedia, Paper Cities reveals that Urban Fantas... Read More