Klas Östergren’s contribution to the Myths series is terrific in prospect. Set in a dystopian future society (is there another kind?), it concerns itself with Hanck Orn’s search for the truth of what happened to his dead son, Toby. ‘The Clan’ responsible for his son’s death are, in fact, the Norse deities, and Hanck’s quest takes him from the Norse equivalent of Olympic heights to the very depths of their Underworld. The Myths series has already featured the likes of Margaret Atwood, Philip Pullman, Ali Smith and David Grossman, with Atwood, for example, offering a feminist take on THE ODYSSEY with THE PENELOPIAD. Östergren’s offering is less clearly a modern take on an old story than others, perhaps because the writer is attempting to achieve more than simply retell the old tales, perhaps because your correspondent isn’t as familiar with the Norse myths as he is with the Greek. A courageous blend of sci-fi, crime fiction and mythology, of genre sensibility and literary style, the novel opens beguilingly …
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