Review a riveting read!

Sigrene’s Bargain with Odin from Inanna Publications is a new book based on Norse mythology that I would love readers to review, a poem/novel with lots of myth-based magic.

My long-time affection for Norse mythology started with my Dad coming in the door one night after work and handing me my very own copy of Roger Lancelyn Green’s Norse Mythology. It wasn’t even a birthday! I didn’t know it at the time, but Green was one of the Inklings, the informal literary group of Oxford dons which also included JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis.

This book, Sigrene’s Bargain, started with an image that was as clear as a photograph. I saw a little girl, maybe six years old, very raggedly dressed with messy hair, reaching up to a dapple-grey horse who had his head bent to her. The girl was clutching one of the horse’s ears. It didn’t look very comfortable for the horse. I thought, Who is this child? What’s her relationship with the horse?

The horse with the girl looked a bit like this.

What resulted was a murder mystery. The first murder ever in Asgard, the city of the Norse gods, leaves Sigrene with a choice, uncover the murderer of her best friend, or wait for the killer to take her out. Either way, she’s in danger.

Here’s what award-winning author Rachel Rose, former Poet Laureate of Vancouver and award-winning author of four collections of poems, a book of short stories and a memoir, says.

“In Zoë Landale’s ambitious and remarkable epic poem, Sigrene’s Bargain with Odin, the reader is immersed, immediately and completely in lyrical legend. Sigrene, half goddess, half mortal, accepts the path destiny commands as she sets out to exact vengeance on the one who killed her childhood friend, Krista, “sister-heart, beloved.” Here be skyhorses and dragons, Fire-gods and Valkyries; here a new song animates the ancient legends.”

Do you write for a blog, have a podcast or review for a magazine? Please be in touch and I’ll be happy to send you a copy. This blessed book took six years to write and several more to interest a publisher in, so I’d be very pleased and relieved if it didn’t sink without a trace. I would much appreciate your assistance!

Valkyrie on horseback, National Museum of Denmark, Peter Nicolai Arbo