One minute I was a courier for criminals, making ends meet so I could take care of my little brother. The next, four stunningly hot Norse gods had brought me back from the dead with wings sprouting from my back and a whole set of valkyrie powers.

I guess that’s just how life goes sometimes.

Too bad our victory over our supernatural enemies turned out to be a farce. The divine home I thought I’d receive is a trap instead. A trap that’s slowly closing in on us, dredging up every painful moment from our pasts.

Can I trust these tempting godly men now that I’ve seen how many secrets they’ve kept from me? And what am I going to do if I have to face my own darkest horrors all over again?

I’d better figure that out fast. Because I’m Aria Watson, and I will not be broken.

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 | 🌶️

It took me exactly 3 hours to read this book. As my second read of 2024, I was fully captivated by the characters as they faced their darkest moments.

In this book the characters have come to realise they have been tricked by the raven lady and must now escape her memory landscape. The raven lady is the character whose arrival and motive I’d guessed from book 1.

The plot of this book reminded me of a very particular episode of Doctor Who and I can tell you now, I’d rather not be stuck in their either!!! However, from a character standpoint, it is quite an ingenious plot point for development and exploration.

In the fake Asgard, Aria, Loki, Thor, Baldur, Hod, and Freya are all pulled into their worst memories and forced to relive them. Aria becomes the key to getting out but having the setting remain essentially on the same platform allows insight into the characters from a readers stand point but also for the characters learning and interacting with others.

It also plays with mythology. The amount of things I googled when reading this – just trying to work out if my knowledge was correct or if I was learning something new…it was definitely a driving point for me reading it.

I think one of the main plot points of this book is coming to the realisation that we all carry trauma but that we all have the power to overcome out demons and fight another day. I think this also resonated with me so much because I am currently in hypnotherapy and many of the ways the characters managed to change their thoughts about their own memories, is very similar to the practices of hypnotherapy.

I talk a lot about strong characters and the importance of them but it is also important when strong characters can show vulnerability and weakness with neutral rawness and allow the read in without any influence.

And especially with characters that do come from mythology, because it breathes life into them and further projects them into the role of characters.

Through this memory journey I learned that Loki could be vulnerable, Thor could be gentle, Baldur could hold darkness, and Hod could bear witness. In fact, I learned way more about their characters than I would have in the series without this book plot.

Aira was very busy in this book. She fell into memory after memory of the gods she was with, picking apart moments of time but never seeing the full picture. She was also running from her own memories and trying to tear down the construct of the raven lady at the same time. It seems like a lot, and it was, really, even I wondered when it would stop. But she never stopped fighting, she never gave up hope, and she held herself with a level of determination most of us could only dream of having.

Speaking on the point of this being a quest to save Odin, let’s talk about him. Not sure how I feel about him right now. i know the Norse mythology history of him and all of his representatives on screen, comic, and everything in between, but as a reader, I haven’t been given too much of a solid glimpse of him yet, so my opinions on him remain unclear.

I made two annotations while reading this book. The first came from Chapter 19 and from Aria’s P.O.V (it is a SPOLILER so be warned!):

“I’m working on it,” I said. “You have helped me in lots of ways, you know, despite all the grimness and scepticism. I think it says a lot that you could be so kind to someone you didn’t trust at all to being with.”

Hod was silent a moment. His hand stilled against my hair. “I don’t think you can call these acts kindness, Ari,” he said. “That was a man falling in love with you.”

For me, this resonated not just because of what was said but in all the moments that led up to it. Hod was the first to truly interact with Aria outside of Valkyrie duties, so he was the first character I made a connection with outside of Aria. These words seem poignant for the time.

The second annotation came from Chapter 26 and from Aria’s P.O.V again. I highlighted this because I felt like I’d walked through fire by the end of the book but still felt like I was still right in the middle of a battle. Aria is a lot more observant that I had expected her to be (SPOLILER so be warned):

“We’d come together. We’d saved Odin. But who was really more dangerous: the giant scheming in the realm of fire or the god we’d just rescued from him?”

Strong words indeed and most likely a set up for the battle I still feel like I’m in!!!