Runemarks

Title: Runemarks

Author: Joanne Harris

Summary: Maddy Smith is a Fiery.  She has a rune, which allows her to do magic.  When she meets a wandering Fiery named One-Eye, she never guesses the truth.  When he sends her below ground to find a treasure called The Whisperer, she discovers Loki, one of the old Norse gods, and he tells her that old One-Eye is actually Odin, the head honcho.  At least, he was the head honcho before the big war.  Now the rest of the gods aren't fully on his side. Maddy and Loki, with the guidance of the Whisperer, venture to the Underworld, where the showdown will occur between Odin and the Nameless.  The Nameless turns out to be the most unexpected character of all.  

Stars:  4-5  

Violence: 7, because when the Nameless speaks, everyone's nose bleeds.  Also, a lot of battling and casting runes happens - which usually involves violence.    

Romance: 4.  Hel, goddess of the Underworld, trades Loki for Balder.  Originally, she had asked Loki to kill Balder so that she and Balder could be together in the Underworld.  (Evidently Balder was god of sunshine or something, so he was handsome.  But really . . . a handsome god named Balder?)  

Language:  4; it contained d--n and b-----d.  

Appropriate for: Young adults

Other: It was like Rick Riordan's The Red Pyramid, what with all the glamours.  And I could draw a connection between runes and hieroglyphs.  

The world was almost confusingly complex.  One set of gods is confusing enough.  Two sets is just crazy.  Maybe the Norse gods were that numerous and befuddling originally.  Well, the author could have explained them better.  

This book seemed anti-Christian or something.  The titles of some of the antagonists were parsons and bishops (and this wasn't the kind of book where the "bad guy" is the protagonist, like Macbeth).  The Nameless, who was really, really, greedy and bad and terrible etc., was called the Ancient of Days.  The antagonist was the established church.  The church sometimes had communion, which was a black-magic connection of the entire church and the Nameless.  It's as if the author is saying that the church is bad.  And that makes me not so sure about this book.