A.S. Byatt is an English author who is internationally renowned for her novels, poems, and short stories. She has won too many awards to mention; however, the one that stands out for me is the Booker prize for her novel Possession. I’ve always been interested in how myths shape and reflect our lives, so when I saw the publisher’s blurb for her new novel, Ragnarok: The End of the Gods, I had to give it a try.

Do you like fantasy? All fantasy is based on myths. Do you like drama? There is little that can equal the family drama of the gods – now there were some real dysfunctional family members! Do you like battles? Nobody can battle like a bunch of ticked off, petty, jealous super powerful gods.

“Myths are often unsatisfactory, even tormenting. They puzzle and haunt the mind that encounters them. They shape different parts of the world inside our heads, and they shape them not as pleasures, but as encounters with the inapprehensible…The myths were cavernous spaces, lit in extreme colours, gloomy, or dazzling, with a kind of cloudy thickness and a kind of overbright transparency about them.” A. S. Byatt – The Author’s Note.

Read the rest of my review at http://popcornreads.com/?p=2794.