Norse Mythology retold from the perspective of the villain. From his first recruitment by Odin, through his rise and fall on Asgard, to his imprisonment, escape, and involvement in Ragnarok, the Trickster God sets the record straight — or crooked — on his deeds and motivations.
Written by Joanne M. Harris and published in 2014, The Gospel of Loki takes place five hundred years before Harris's previous books, Runemarks and Runelight. While pretty much self-contained, it explains a lot of the backstory to Runemarks, and may thus be worth reading first.
As much of the plot is drawn directly from Norse Mythology, expect a lot of the same tropes to show up.
Examples of tropes present in the novel:
- 0% Approval Rating: By virtue of being a demon has led to the gods of Asgard not to trust Loki and they will routinely blame him whenever something bad befalls anyone of them. Granted, they are right half the time, but only half the time and even then their correct assumptions are usually without presentable evidence.
- Arch-Enemy: Heimdall for Loki
- Big Eater: Thor, which causes problems during the mission to recover Mjolnir from Thrym. Thor's appetite nearly blows their cover prematurely, forcing Loki to invent the excuse that “Freyja” has fasted for over a week in anticipation of the wedding.
- Bride and Switch: With Thor subbing for Freyja.
- Deadpan Snarker: Loki
- Disguised in Drag: Thor and Loki during the famous incident with Thrym and the theft of Mjolnir. Amusingly, Loki smugly observes he makes a more convincing woman than Thor.
- Exact Words: Brokk has the right to Loki's head — as long as he doesn't touch his neck!
- Extreme Omnisexual: Loki's reaction to the sexual taboos on Asgard is telling:No animals, no siblings, no men, no married women, no demons — frankly, it was amazing to me that anyone had sex at all, with so many rules against it.
- Foreshadowing:
- Several of the descriptions listed on the "Characters" page give clues to the characters' future actions.
- Hoder is "a better shot than you might think".
- Njörd has "nice feet".
- Brokk is "good at sewing".
- At the end of "Bricks and Mortar", Loki glances at Svadilfari and remarks that he's "quite a nice-looking horse". Is he sizing him up? Or checking him out?
- Loki spends much of the book muttering about his dislike of snakes. Anyone who knows Norse Mythology knows where that's going.
- Several of the descriptions listed on the "Characters" page give clues to the characters' future actions.
- Foregone Conclusion:
- In-universe example when Thor is disguised as “Freyja”. Loki knows Thor's temper will go nuclear eventually; his fury at Thrym for stealing Mjolnir and his humiliation at being disguised as a bride guarantee it. The dramatic tension lies in whether or not they can recover the hammer before that happens. It ends up being a close call; by the time Mjolnir is finally brought out, Loki observes Thor’s temper has reached the breaking point.
- Another in-universe example after Gullveig-Heid springs Loki from the cave with the snake. She leaves behind a Rune-generated simulacrum of Loki that will fool any casual glances or visitors. However, it won't hold up to in-depth scrutiny and Loki and Gullveig-Heid both know the Asgardians will realize the deception eventually. But by that point, of course, it'll be too late.
- Gender Bender: Loki
- Groin Attack: Loki. To himself!
- Ironic Nickname: Honir the Silent. Not because he's the strong, silent type, but because they were hoping he would take the hint and 'shut up.''
- Killed Offscreen: Loki's sons, Vali and Narvi. We know that they die, but the exact circumstances are never specified.*
- The Knights Who Say "Squee!": When Loki joins forces with Gullveig-Heid, he admits one of the reasons he misjudged her true motives was that he was genuinely starstruck to be working with a legend like her.
- Lame Last Words: As Ragnarok descends, Loki's last words are "Oh, crap." He lampshades that as far as last words go, they weren't particularly memorable.
- Lip Losses: As it recounts the canonical events of the eponymous trickster god's life, it naturally features the moment in which the dwarves he cheated take revenge upon him by sewing his lips shut. This is painful enough, but he later has to slowly tear the stitches out of his lips one by one, leaving him permanently scarred thanks to the dwarves' magical thread. For good measure, the fact that his fellow gods did nothing to help - and openly laughed at his misfortune - leaves him even more bitter than ever before, gradually paving the way for his later betrayal...
- Mad Libs Catchphrase: The chapters in Book 1 all begin with a quote that is a variation on "Never trust a [person]."
- Mister Seahorse: Loki
- Mythology Gag: If Vali is transformed into a wolf by Odin, it happens off-page and Loki never learns about it. But earlier, both he and Narvi are very impressed by their werewolf half-brother Fenris and take to copying his style.
- Oh, Crap!: Literally Loki's last words as Ragnarok concludes and he dies.
- Order Versus Chaos: The concepts of "Order" and "Chaos" here are applied to the "Ice" and "Fire" motifs common to Norse Mythology. Odin, being the lawmaker in the Nine Worlds and kin to Bor and the other beings born from Ice, acts as the agent of order, and has Loki summoned from Pandemonium — the very heart of the Chaos that begat the Nine Realms — because he needs an agent of chaos to break the rules when such rule-breaking is needed.
- Our Demons Are Different: Demons are portrayed as mere aspects of the primordial flames of chaos (also known as "Pandemonium"). Since they are mere "drops in the ocean" of this unknowable force of Blue-and-Orange Morality, they have no set form and only the bare minimum of a sense of self.
- Prequel: For Runemarks and Runelight, though Harris almost certainly worked this story out before writing the other two. Basically has the same kind of relationship to them as The Silmarillion does to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
- Really Gets Around: Loki. Also, Freyja "will sleep with practically anyone as long as jewelry is involved."
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Loki gives each of the gods one in the Lokasenna retelling.
- Running Gag: Loki's self-deprecating "So shoot me".
- Sadly Mythtaken: Harris clearly knows her subject well, and stays very close to the source material — or, at least, a reasonable re-interpretation thereof. However, there are a few out-and-out contradictions:
- Sleipnir is described as a strawberry roan, even tough Gylfaginning specifically says he is grey.
- Odin's brother Honir is nicknamed "The Silent", even though he never shuts up. In the original mythology, it's Odin's son Vidar who is called "The Silent God''
- Vidar is also supposed to kill Fenrir, but this version has Thor doing it. Basically, Vidar's been left out of the story, with his part split among the other characters.
- Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: It occurs to Loki that the Prophecy of the Oracle only works when people know about it, but once you do, you're trapped. He hadn't thought of killing Balder until Mimir told him how he was going to do it, and he only really betrayed the gods when his awareness that they were expecting him to led to him running out of options.
- Trickster God: Loki
- Unreliable Narrator: Loki himself refers to the story as a "tissue of lies", but reassures us that "it's at least as true as the official version".
