Customer Reviews

The Life Eaters

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I'm a sucker for alternate history, especially when it involves Nazis (wow, that sounds bad...) or other aspects of World War II. I also have a minor interest in Norse and other mythology (a spillover from playing D&D back in the day). So when I came across this book about the Nazis winning WWII with the aid of the Norse pantheon, I had to read it. The story just drops you right into the mix, with a group of good-guy holdouts, aided by the one renegade Norse god (Loki, the trickster), on a kind of suicide commando mission in the 1960s. Basically, the background is that WWII was proceeding normally until D-Day, when the Norse gods pretty much wiped out the Allied invasion of Europe. The premise is that all that real-life Nazi fascination with the occult (popularly portrayed in Raiders of the Last Ark) comes to fruition and concentration camps are basically giant sacrificial abattoirs designed to maximize the number of souls offered to the deities. It's a clever concept that does a nice job of dovetailing real-life horror with fantastical elements.

However, the concept doesn't work so well in the execution. The first part of the book is pretty solid stuff, the reader is drawn in by the slowly unfolding background and premise, and there's plenty of action. This section is apparently based on Brin's 1986 short-story "Thor Meets Captain America" (which is available on his web site). The latter two-thirds of the book start to spin wildly out of control and become much less engaging. (Which is essentially the same problem I had with the final third of Birn's otherwise fun book Kiln People.) Basically, others around the world learn how to "raise" the gods through human sacrifice, and soon the world is enveloped in a kind of Battle Royale of the Gods. Before one has a chance to catch a breath, we have orgies of blood in Africa and Asia, as more and more soul-fed gods are raised. (One could make a case that the book is somewhat racist, in the sense that the only people who raise gods are Nazis, Africans, and Asians, while the forces of monotheism practice restraint. There's even a totally sappy scene in which the leaders of monotheism come together in brotherly unity to defend humanity.) This gets even more complicated when some plucky scientists reveal that someone is setting fire to oil fields all over the world. This leads into an even bigger storyline about the "cold gods" vs. the "hot gods", who are trying to use global warming to trigger a new ice age which will ensure their dominance.

Phew... and this doesn't even mention the Rebel Alliance -- I mean, the good guys' undersea base... or Loki's scheme to grow the Yggdrasil to evacuate his followers to outer space... or the crazy mechwarrior suit that the SS guy is given by the Allies. There's a lot crammed in and it just spirals out of control, until it just suddenly ends... Part of the book's problem is that each section is focused on a different protagonist, so there's no one to carry the story all the wy through. At the beginning it's an American soldier, in the middle it's an American weatherman, and then at the end it's a renegade SS man. This last person is around for the whole book, but not as the central figure. This lack of focus strips the story of any kind of figure for the reader to rally around. Brin attempts to add a little levity via some supporting characters, but it never feels organic or appropriate to the moment. For example, in part one there's a wise-ass hipster who speaks in beatniky slang -- as if that particular subculture would have evolved if WWII dragged on for 25 years! The book is also very heavy on telling the reader what's going on via lots of expository text crammed in, which never feels quite right.

Hampton's art is also pretty weak on the whole, especially when it comes to people and faces. There are a few nice panels here and there, like in part one, where Thor is shown throwing his hammer through five people in a shower of blood, but for the most part, the lines and coloring aren't compelling at all. It's not a terrible book, but it totally fails to live up to its potential. Part one is certainly solid, and there are a few nice set pieces further on (especially the jungle patrol in part two), but there are far too many missteps, and by the time we reach the dwarves and fairies at the end, one ceases to care. PS. Why is the circa 1960s Egyptian Army attacking en masse with swords?

The book has been described as "Thor meets Captain America" and is worth your time if only for the original and intriguing idea put forward by the author on the true objective behind the nazi holocaust in World War II.

In the Life Eaters, the readers are introduced to an alternate reality where the allies mounting advantages culminating in D-Day on June 6 1944 suffer a complete reversal of fortune when no less than the ancient gods of the Norse appear to side with Nazi Germany. A very interesting and novel idea that for the first chapter was told very well and had me entralled. However, the remaining parts of the book deteriorates into mediocrity and culminates in a "war of the gods" scenario that to me, greatly spoils whatever promise the idea originally had. Of course, a big part of any graphic novel is the art itself: A great cover painting, but the art within is good in parts but mostly average.

In summary, a promising and very original idea, but the story and art does not completely deliver. It really could have been much better.

It's 1962, and the American military is putting all its might into a gamble - perhaps the last chance to win World War 2! Indeed, in 1944, just as the tide of war seemed to be pushing the war towards an inevitable conclusion, the unthinkable happened and the Norse gods intervened on the side of the Germans. But, who are these gods and what do they want? Can men make war on gods?

This is a hard book to review. Part One of the book is spectacular, with lots of action and a fascinating story. Loki is playing the trickster, keeping everyone off balance. In Part Two, the storyline shifts and men try to understand who the various gods are and what are they up to; Loki's role diminishes and becomes much more hazy. In Part Three, men learn what the gods are, and how to fight them.

As David Brin makes clear in the Afterword, this book is intended as an anti-religion polemic. However, a small problem is that in weaving the argument into his story, the author drops both. In real life, religion can lead to bad ends, but the godly intervention in this book doesn't go very far in making that point. Also, to make the argument, the author moves away from the action and adventure, which is simply wonderful in Part One, and into preaching by two-dimensional characters introduced for that purpose.

Overall, I thought that this was a good book, whereas it might have been a great polemic, or a great action-adventure graphic novel. It couldn't be both, and it isn't.

A well crafted, cautionary tale set in a contemporary time utilizing the concept of real gods, of various faiths walking the Earth and interacting with their believers. So, utopia at last? No, more like Hell on Earth. This story is well crafted from the prose by SF author David Brin, to the sequential art (with excellent color choices) by the artist/illustrator Scott Hampton. The story has a large scope with global coverage as well as a compelling tale of one man's fight to save humanity from itself by demonstrating the reasons we strive for something better, something mortal. All the usual standards, such as, "if we had the gods on our side we will win our wars" are revealed to be more than a little dubious. Even renegade gods have something up their sleeve. The very reason for their existence is a high price to pay. The first act shows how the Norse gods help Germany win WWII. This is alternative history with a cosmic twist.Once I started reading this I couldn't put this graphic novel down.

I bought this for my husband's birthday, and he absolutely loves it! He is a newbie to the world of graphic novels, but Life Eaters consists of a combination of occult magic, outer space and Nazi-ism, which are all interests of ours. [...]

This is an expansion of Brin's old short story "Thor Meets Captain America", which I read about twenty years ago when it came out. The premise is that the Holocaust was black magic designed to summon the Norse Gods, and that it worked, resulting in the Allies' defeat. Brin's website has the original story, which is excellent. In fact, it leaves little room for a sequel.
<em>The Life Eaters</em> makes the original story its first chapter, linking it to later action in the same horrible world by introducing a new character, an SS officer who was an acolyte in the initial chapter. Twenty or thirty years later (??) he is aiding the Nazis and the Aesir in their conquest of Southeast Asia, an occasion for wonderful allusions to "Apocalypse Now" as well as other Vietnam movies. A new world struggle unfolds: the Japanese and other nations have learned how to make their own "gods", and a war of the gods emerges in which each nation slaughters millions of its own people to create gods who can fight to kill the other nations' gods. (This would be a hellacious RPG setting. Emphasis on the "hell".)
Of course, the major problem is that eventually the Earth's population will drop so low that the "gods" cannot still exist. Please note that these "gods" are patently not "really divine" and that Brin makes clear, abundantly clear, that they are hideous monsters. The only one even faintly friendly to Americans is Loki, and his true nature is revealed soon enough.

Joe Kasting, an American soldier under the Nazis, is also a meteorologist, and when the narrator picks him off the battlefield, one of the few scholars left on Earth. Shown classified data of the Saddam-like burning of oil wells, he realizes that hot-weather "gods" are trying to force global warming, while cold-weather "gods" could fight back by spewing dust and crud into the stratosphere, nuclear-winter style. Either scheme spells doom for any living humans. Kasting is taken to the undersea base of the Hidden Good Guys (?) and Loki attacks (??). Loki has a scheme to kill <strong>all life on the planet</strong> in order to grow a tree (Yggdrasil) to synchronous orbit, and to take his "faithful" to safety in outer space (this part looks copied, honestly, from Niven's not very good Rainbow Mars.) At least Niven had the wonderful pun "Hangtree"

Yggdrasil, the world-tree, was called Ygg's Horse because Ygg (Odin) hanged himself on it and stabbed himself with his spear in order to learn the Runes. This technique of self-education has not been successful since, and is not recommended.

The SS officer narrator, who is a bit of a loose cannon, escapes Loki and drifts with the aid of very Brin-like dolphins to Arabia (??) where the remnants of the monotheistic religions are gathered to resist Nazi genocide. I have to say, having been to the Persian Gulf myself, that I can't think of a better place to resist Evil Snow Gods. My lord, HUMANS evolved in Africa and the heat in the Gulf routinely kills people. In this horrendous scumhole, a cheerful multicultural conclave gathers to figure out what to do with the narrator. There are a couple of pages of talking-head religion stuff.

Here is the short passage that has aroused so much hostility to Brin. A Christian leader, to make peace among the remaining religions, allows that we might abandon any symbol which offends others. The example is the cross. Instead, these Christians (as the reader has already seen) use the fish symbol of the earliest followers of Jesus.

Is this so horribly hateful? I can't see it, and I'm a Christian and a Sunday school teacher. The fish symbolized Jesus' followers for <em>three hundred years</em> before <em>anyone</em> even depicted the Crucifixion at all, and even Constantine did not use the cross as a symbol. The fish is a perfectly Biblical symbol ("I will make you <em>fishers of men</em>") and alludes to Christ's divine meal of loaves and fishes, the one miracle in all four canonical Gospels. I am certain that Jews in Brin's world (Brin is Jewish) gave up the depiction of Christ as a Voldemort-like magician-thief in the old Talmud, and that Muslims ceased to claim that Jews and Christians had mistakenly added error to the <em>Umm al-Kitab</em> to create the Old and New Testaments.

This religious gabfest is soon over and our SS renegade hero is dressed in super-armor for his mission to fight the life-eating "gods". He goes to the root of the space tree and tricks Kasting (who has been offstage but is apparently unhurt by it) into stealing the life force of Loki. Kasting then becomes a "god" (awkwardly drawn) and returns to human form, restoring life to the Earth and freeing humans to fight the "gods". Weirdly, this is the end of the story.

Brin in an afterword explains that humans, not imaginary creatures, must control our own destiny. Try as I might, I can't read this as an anti-religious polemic. Nowhere in all of Brin's writing (that I have seen) does he say that religion is false or that it is harmful to our species. In each society he creates, religion plays an appropriate role. In any case, the characterization of this graphic novel as an anti-religious book has no foundation in reality.

Other people have dabbled around with some of the elements of the story that David Brin develops, but none that I've seen have ever done so with quite the same desire to tackle this new world head on the way he has.

The world is a radically different place after the old Norse gods return to champion the Nazi cause. The early part of the story is especially captivating as this new world unfolds. The blending of mythology and technology is also handled very well. The graphics are well done.

The later part of the book seems to lose a little of this magic in its drive to create the ending, and there is a definite agenda to the storyline. Having an agenda isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the way the theme is handled may come across a little heavy handed for some readers.

(An aside comment with regards to an earlier review-- I think that David's reference where he is somewhat critical of the cross and the idea of redemption was blown way out of proportion. It's one little somewhat obscure frame. Agree or disagree, unless you're the type of individual that can't stand for anyone else to think for themselves, I don't think that you'll have a big problem. As a christian who believes in the fall and in redemption, I didn't. Besides, it's fiction anyway. Keep some perspective.)

Although the book may fall down just a little in the second half, I think that it's still not to be missed. I enjoyed it tremendously and recommend it to anyone with a love of history, "alternate history", or David Brin's other books. Give it a chance.

The Life Eaters (Brin / Hampton): David Brin's short story, "Thor Meets Captain America" was nominated, rightfully, for a Hugo. It is an unusual - and bleak - take on alternate history, in which the Norse Gods pop down from Asgard to help Germany in World War II. In The Life Eaters, Brin adapts his own work into a graphic novel, and then extends the adventure.

Scott Hampton's work is stunning - beautifully painted scenes that do their best to add a certain Alex Ross-like gravity to the subject material. Unfortunately, he doesn't have much material to work with.

(More, plus an equally snarky savaging of the Books of Magick: Life During Wartime after the jump)

Brin, although an author of considerable talent, struggles with the comic book medium. Vast swathes of text dominate each page, and the graphic novel only intermittantly drops down for brief interludes of dialogue and violence.

As a whole, The Life Eaters is awkwardly paced. The first half is a direct transposition of the short story into illustrated form - rather than a translation into the comic medium. The second half is stilted and rushed, like Brin just mailed a stack of notes to Hampton and called it a day. Whereas the first half is at least a decent story (if not a good comic book), the latter half of The Life Eaters is almost incomprehensible (and this despite the presence of expository text on every page).

Comic books are a medium - just like books, movies and television. Just as a good comic book can make a very bad movie, a good short story can make a terrible comic book.

As one of the six people who enjoyed The Postman, both the movie and the book upon which it was based, I had high hopes for David Brin's graphic novel, The Life Eaters. The story reminded me of C. J. Carella's underappreciated Armageddon RPG, Mike Mignola's Hellboy, and Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Pencilled by Scott Hampton, the story is set in an alternate modern world in which Himmler's mysticism actually paid off. The Thule Society manages to summon the old Norse gods (at least, so it seems) by way of the most efficient human sacrifice in history. With the aid of Odin and friends, the Nazis easily repel Operation Overlord and quickly regain the offensive.
The majority of the action in the story takes place after Asian and African nations have resorted to massive human sacrifice of their own in order to summon their own evil soul-hungry deities in an attempt to fight fire with fire. The good guys are an alliance made up of Free Americans, Free Canadians, Free Mexicans, and the Israel-Iranians, basically the forces of monotheism, known as the Abrahamites. They are the ones who refuse to stoop to the level of the Nazis.
It was good to see the monotheists portrayed as the good guys for a change. So frequently in fantasy/speculative fiction, pagans and their gods are only ever seen as sympathetic human-loving beings who could live in happiness and peace if those pesky Christians would just leave them be. So it was good to see the Christians, Jews, and Moslems portrayed in a positive light for once.
The monotheists put aside their differences to unite against a big capital-"E" evil. This putting-aside is one of my complaints about the book, for, you see, the Christians put aside their established symbol due to its having been used as the emblem of crusaders. It has been replaced with the historical fish emblem. I wouldn't have found this nod the Nerovian notion of religious tolerance quite so objectionable if the novel had maintained monotheistic ecumenism as mankind's hope. Unfortunately, it quickly degenerated into yet another paean to humanist hubris.
I had some other minor complaints, such as the dropping of an unterseeboot from the belly of a bomber over the Baltic Sea and all hands surviving. But, overall, though, I would recommend it. The art was well-done. It was nice to see Thor as a grizzled Norse-god with a blood-red beard and not that shaven Barbie-on-Testosterone that passes for Thor in the Marvel Universe. There was even a panel that showed what looked like Sikhs firing M-16s at Anubis-led Egyptians. If nothing else, I recommend Brin's essay at the end. He makes some interesting points about the nature of science fiction/speculative history.
So, in spite of my philosophical differences with Dr. Brin, like my beloved Abrahamites, I will focus on our lowest common denominator, which, in this case, is the love of a good story. And that is exactly what Brin has provided.

This book really had a lot going for it.

The artwork in the title is quite amazing and can hold its own with most painted comic art (e.g. Moonshadow, Kingdom Come, Lucifer, Golden Age, etc.).

The story has some fascinating insights in to alternate history and it deals heavily with the troubles of nationalism, religion and militarism coming together.

But the execution of the story is troublesome. Does it want to be an Italo Calvino style abstract fairly tale or does it want to be a Nausicaa style post-apocalyptic ecological fable? I'm not entirely sure the story has any idea, it tries to get both streams at once but the elements seem to conflict with each other.

When I read this, I had the sinking feeling that it was supposed to unfold over thirty issues. And, as a thirty issue series, it actually would have been kind of cool when it moves to the shocking revelations.

As a single slim volume, you get something that is rushed, messy and rather confusing.

Sadly, it doesn't work.