War of the Gods [Mass Market Paperback]

Poul Anderson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 15, 1999

The story of the great King Hadding is one of the darkest and most violent to come down to us from the old North. Hadding was raised by giants far from his rightful throng, as his father, a Danish King, was slain shortly after Hadding's birth. But the times comes when Hadding feels he must reclaim his legitimate place in the land of the old North. He must endure ferocious battles, the charms of voluptuous Valkyries, and a War of the Gods to rival Armageddon.

Editorial Reviews

From Kirkus Reviews

Veteran pro Anderson (The Fleet of Stars, p. 26, etc.) offers a Dark Age saga based on Old Scandinavian mythology and the exploits of the legendary Danish King Hadding (cf. Bernard King's Starkadder, 1989). Following a disastrous war of the gods between the Aesir and the Vanir, the Vanir Njord becomes an implacable foe of the Aesir and their chief, Odin. So Odin arranges for Njord's avatar to be born in the world of men as Hadding, son of King Gram Skjoldung of Denmark. To ensure his safety, young Hadding is sent to live with a family of jotuns, or giants. Meanwhile, Svipdag, King of Geatland and Svithjod (Sweden), invades Denmark and kills Gram. Later, helped by a disguised Odin, Hadding overcomes Svipdag, but the latter's son Uffi retains control of Geatland and Svithjod, and the blood feud between them drags on for years. Eventually, after many further adventures, Hadding will relinquish his kingdom to his hotheaded children and give himself to Odin, thereby ending the dispute among the gods. Anderson writes in a modern Anglo- Saxon, full of words that long ago vanished from English; and if readers are sent scurrying to consult dictionaries and encyclopedias--so much the better. A brilliantly accomplished yarn that smolders bravely without quite catching fire. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"One of science fiction's most revered writers."--USA Today

"An action-packed fantasy extravaganza."--Science Fiction Chronicle

"One of the field's greatest writers....War of the Gods is one of a number of Anderson's works that will stand the test of time."--Orlando Sun-Sentinel

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Tor Fantasy (February 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812539257
• ISBN-13: 978-0812539257
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 4.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 0.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,533,409 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The final third redeems all!, February 15, 1998

By 

Stuart W. Mirsky "swm" (New York, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: War of the Gods (Hardcover)

The text begins interestingly enough, albeit somewhat ponderously, as Poul Anderson, one of the greats of Science Fiction & Fantasy, essays once more to travel the mist-shrouded roads of Faery. Writing at least since the fifties (I enjoyed his stuff going back to the sixties), Anderson's "voice" seems to have mellowed and subtly altered with the passing of the years. Never one of the most moving or most profound of tale spinners, he was always, nevertheless, the consummate storyteller. Still this present tale lacks the energy and vitality of his earlier saga-like excursions. While The Broken Sword leaped with life and blood and darkness and Hrolf Kraki's Saga (basically a translation of a legendary Danish-Norse tale, with some additions by the author to make it more contemporary) charged onward from episode to episode until crashing mightily on the rocks of it's own climactic shore, this new tale seems oddly stilted and self-conscious. The language does not pour forth, carrying the reader over the unsure ground of fantasy, as Anderson was wont to do in former days, and the characters he has given us here seem paler than in the past -- and not nearly as interesting as their predecessors were. The protagonist, Hadding the Dane-King, for instance, moves sluggishly from one odd episode to another, always winning his battles and defeating his foes, never seeming to be in any serious danger at all, a circumstance which ultimately seems to tell on him as much as it does on us. And the people around him, as well as his enemies, never seem to be quite worthy of the attention he lavishes on them. Fostered by giants of old Norse legend and lover to his own foster mother (or sister) who adopts human form to be with him, guided by a mysterious one-eyed "wanderer", Hadding ought to be more multi-faceted than the invincible, noble hero we are given. Through much of this tale only the relatively easy-read prose (despite the incorporation of archaic words and forms to set the mood) and the intrinsically promising subject-matter (for those of us who like the Norse thing) keeps you reading. Written stolidly and with far more description than one is likely to find in the real Icelandic and Norse stuff, the tale yet retains the sleepy, dream-like presentation of events and images which is so characteristic of this material in its original form -- a form in which giants are never quite giants as we understand them (for they seem larger or smaller depending on their surroundings) and gods walk about like magicians. Nevertheless, Anderson has here created a tale which, surprisingly and for all its apparent faults, does stand up -- and admirably so, in the end. It is a story of sadness and, finally, understanding -- sketched against a backdrop of adventure and fighting and killing. The last part of the book redeems the slowness and awkward-seeming "forced" prose that went before as the truth of the tale is relentlessly brought home -- how a single life may be more than its appearance alone and how the worlds of fantasy and reality may intersect afterall. It's just a story, Anderson says in his afterword and, indeed, it is that -- but a story which reached me in a largely unexpected way. It takes an historical legend from much earlier times and revives it in a manner which does honor to the source material from which it is drawn while yet placing it in a perspective we moderns can grasp. As The Broken Sword was, no doubt, a young man's breathless and headlong tale (Anderson himself once suggested this in a foreword he'd written somewhat later to that book), so this one is the work of another writer entirely -- one who has lived his life and seen the fullness of it and its inevitable denouement. This one goes deeper than it seemed at the first. And redeems itself, and all of us, for that.

Stuart W. Mirsky
Author of The King of Vinland's Saga

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Pseudo-historical/mythological fantasy, November 30, 2002

By 

Andrew J. Sydlik "writer and artist" (Pittsburgh, PA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: War of the Gods (Hardcover)

Apparently, Poul Anderson is a prolific sci-fi and fantasy writer, and has been writing for a long time, too. I haven't read anything else of his, but based on this book, I am considering picking something else of his up. This wasn't one of the greatest books I've ever read, but it held my interest because of its use of Norse mythology and the supernatural. The narrative starts out relating the strife between Odin's Aesir and the Vanir, threatening to separate the gods forever, and perhaps have cataclysmic effects on the whole universe. It then focuses on Hadding for the rest of the book, who struggles to establish a stable kingdom, facing dangers both earthly and otherworldly. His role in bringing peace to the war between the gods may not be clear until the end, unless you're a lot more cunning than me. Following the interrelationships between the characters and geographies sometimes became a daunting task and confuses the narrative, but once I got past those things, the story became very engrossing. I'm not usually into fantasy, but I'm not sure this is entirely fantasy - its pseudo-historical/myth/fantasy/horror. The supernatural and pseudo-historic elements (some of which Anderson admits are inaccurate in a brief Afterword) don't really get in the way, though at times, as I said, the focus on detailed interrelationships and geographies can be a problem. The characterization is also a little weak; although there is some, I don't feel any of the characters were very fully developed, not even Hadding. There are flashes of some of the characters that reveal something profound about their personalities, but ultimately the narrative isn't very character-driven. Instead, the emphasis is more on describing action-packed battle scenes and the history of the characters and land. Still, as I said, the story became intriguing to me, and those few passages of characterization got me to care enough for the people that I wanted to know what happened to them. And eventually I did come to sympathize with Hadding as the text showed him as a leader of people, though something a bit more than human; fair and compassionate, yet stern and brazen; strong and courageous, yet rash and vulnerable. Also, fortunately, the action scenes weren't glorified or clichéd, but instead driven by metaphor and original description. For example, "Like two storm waves, a greater and a lesser, the hosts crashed together. Blood-foam spattered into the wind. The tides churned, swirled in among each other, became a seething that howled." The pages are filled with the typical fantasy fare: warriors, kings, princesses, sorcerers, witches, trolls, elves (though these are the scary kind), as well as some uncommon creatures such as jotuns (giants), drows, and land wights. And of course gods and goddesses. Recommended if you're into Norse mythology, or think you would enjoy a good, dark mythologically and pseudo-historically based fantasy.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good but not great, November 19, 2001

By 

Barry J McKnight - See all my reviews

This review is from: War of the Gods (Mass Market Paperback)

While not on the level with Anderson's Hrolf Kraki's Saga, I still found this novel enjoyable. It successfully evokes the same mood as many of the Icelandic sagas...dark, melancholy, its meaning murky. There is not too much available these days in Viking fiction. If you are a fan of the genre, read it.