Top positive review
4.0 out of 5 starsA Trip through the Mythos
Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 9, 2013
Forged by Fate is a novel that deftly weaves together the pantheon of gods from around the world, and weaves the around a central pillar of Christian beliefs in a way that everything makes sense and feels right. Thor falls in love with Eve and pals around with Ra and Athena and none of that feels weird when you're reading it.
The book deals with three different timelines and switched between them well to keep the reader apprised of what's going on in each regularly and not losing interest in any of the time lines. There is the current time line where Eve is getting ready for her marriage. The Creation time line where Eve is created and has to deal with the situation in the Garden of Eden. The final time line is Thor arriving on Earth and him traveling the world.
The Thor time sections of the story held my interest the best as Thor is traveling Earth, and his relationship with Eve or Tora as she's known then was well written and dealt with. The interactions with the other Norse Gods was fun to watch as well, and it's good to see that Loki is a dick here as pop culture always treats him, and the way I like to see him used. His interactions with Ra and Athena are very entertaining, and I especially enjoyed the relationship he developed with Athena. Through this view we get to see a lot of neat ways that Eve is folded into the rest of Christian beliefs as well as some other mythological stories, namely lots of hints about the Trojan War.
The Creation part of the story is a really interesting take on the Christian Creation myth and creates a lot of new dynamics on a story everybody knows. Lucifer as the snake plays less of a role in the forbidden fruit being eaten, and Eve sacrifices the garden to be able to escape the harsh rule of Adam.
The part of the story set in the present is the only part that dragged for me as it really seemed to be setting itself up for awesome stuff that's going to be happening later in the story. There is a lot of tension in this section built up between Eve and Adam, but it slowly plays out her relationship with Garrit a member of her protector family. There are also a lot of interesting hints at Eve's life before this current one which I wanted to see more of, but that is a lot of what the present story was, hints at what I want to see more of and a build up to what should be more explosive in the rest of the series.
The ending of the book is kind of a letdown as well, as it really feels like the author ran out of book and had to call it a day for this part of the series, but it's still a really well written part, it's obviously going to be a series that is much more appealing when you can read the whole series at once, but there is still a lot of good stuff shoved into this part of the story. The epilogue does leave a good taste for what we'll be reading in the future and I'm excited to get there and see what that future holds. This is definitely a book I want to read again, but I'm going to wait until I have more of the series to read it, maybe.
