The Fires of Muspelheim: Eschaton Cycle (Gods of the Ragnarok Era)

Ragnorak Leadership 3Odin Compared to another Fantasy LeaderIn this, the 3rd and final installment of the reviews of Odin's leadership in the series Gods of Ragnarok by Matt Larkin, I will do a comparison of Odin’s leadership qualities compared to another leader in fantasy literature.I find general reviews of books mildly helpful in encouraging me to read a book or series, but the longer the series, the less valuable the general reviews are in encouraging me to take on a major project such as the series Gods of Ragnarok.I am very glad I took on the task to read Matt Larkin’s series as it is rich in stimulating imagery and thought-provoking action. It is very much an addition to the library of modern retellings of Norse stories in a way that is easy to relate to. The reader is very much close to the characters in the stories and this makes focused reviews of the stories valuable to readers who are considering undertaking this series.Why Odin’s leadership?Because Odin’s decisions are very prominent throughout the series. Loki is part of Odin’s decisions, but Loki in the series is different from the myth and so is best left to another review entirely for him alone. In my previous two reviews about Odin’s leadership I discuss his strengths and weakness, his successes and failures. But how does he compare to other fantasy leaders?The first problem is to decide which leader in modern fantasy stories to compare Odin to. Certainly, there are many to choose from but which one?A guiding principle here is to look for a common quality. A quality Odin shares with the other leader he is being compared to. The quality I settled on was love.Not love itself, but love in the story that was an unmitigated weakness for the character and was a major reason for the downfall of the character. This narrows down the field of comparisons considerably and since I have been reading science fiction, action adventure and fantasy including classics I decided on a character from a story that is a classic and persistent in publication. Not widely read today but the book has never gone out print since its initial publication.The character, the fantasy leader I chose to compare Odin to is Ayesha, the main character in the series “She”.The series consists of 4 novels written in the late 1800’s.SheAyesha the return of SheShe and AllanWisdom’s Daughter.It is the first novel She where the common term “She who must be obeyed” comes from and is now a common phrase in the English language so the story has a powerful legacy making Ayesha a worthy choice to compare to Matt Larkin’s Odin in Gods of Ragnarok.So to begin I have tell a brief story of Ayesha and describe her with regard to her character and leadership qualities. After comparing her to Odin with regard to their leadership qualities I will do a fun comparison of their abilities and speculation if they had for some reason met and become allies.The story of Ayesha is a fantastic one and is not completely revealed in the first book She but is made clearer in the final book Wisdom’s Daughter. Ayesha began as a divine creature, a servant of the Egyptian goddess Isis, who fought in the magical wars between Horus and Set on the side of Isis’s son Horus, the god leader of the forces of light. After the war due to a failure of faith and being captured by the Greek Goddess Aphrodite Ayesha was cursed with unrequited love, but given the chance of redemption by Isis in a mortal life if she could meet and overcome her tests of faith in the goddess.During this mortal life Ayesha was born to a tribal people in the middle east BC at the time of the Greek Persian wars. She gained early military training and combat experience fighting alongside her father defending the tribe and it lands from raiders as a mounted warrior and later went to Egypt and trained as priestess and with royalty Ayesha was involved in some of the actual fighting in Lebanon. During her time in Egypt she met the man who would forever be her unrequited love and she would over and over again encounter him and his wife.Later Ayesha and a councilor priest of Isis and a group of loyal worshippers of Isis had to flee Egypt to a sanctuary land in the south and the priest showed her a flame in a cave that actually contained a primordial creature made up of divine energy. Ayesha was old, nearing the end of her lifespan, and near completion of her debt of atonement to Isis when the man she loved and his wife came to seek sanctuary in her isolated land.Once again, in a failure of faith; Ayesha was overwhelmed with love and in a confrontation with the man she loved and his wife Ayesha stepped into the flame as it were and the creature sized her and transformed her into a form that was mortal, magical and long lived.The man she loved was so frightened by her change in appearance that he tried to withdraw from her and in a fit of rage and pain Ayesha used magic to instantly slay him. Stunned and grief stricken at what she had done she was later visited by the spirit of her priest councilor who told her she had failed her atonement and her fate was to be long lived and powerful watching over her lonely kingdom until her lover returned. Only when her atonement was completely fulfilled would she be forgiven.During that long 2,000 year wait she would defend the kingdom she was tasked to defend with ruthless efficiency. Ayesha was now gifted with divine, and arcane powers, enabling her to control the elements, the dead and gaining an extensive alchemical knowledge due to the ability to journey to other places and worlds gaining knowledge and power making her the most powerful force on the planet, yet known to only a few as “She who must be obeyed.” She was covered in such a divine radiance that it would make Odin’s first encounter with a Ljosalfar look like visiting the Tooth Fairy. Yes, when she decided to show her true appearance those who beheld her fell to their bellies begging to serve her.Yet despite her powers, she never found happiness due to the way love affected her judgement. Like Odin of Matt Larkin’s Gods of Ragnarok she suffered from bad decision making due to love.So how do Ayesha and Odin’s leadership qualities compare?Early training and Experience: Odin would have recognized Ayesha in her early years as a shield maiden. A woman warrior who defended the tribe.Ayesha had more emphasis in formal training in leadership than young Odin did and was something of a scholar with a broad interest in other peoples and cultures. Odin certainly had more demands place on him at a younger age and demonstrated again and again, an energy and innovation with an amazing adaptability to circumstances able to overcome obstacle after obstacle in the early novels. Ayesha faced no such challenges in a similar time in her life and likely would not have been able to think on her feet as quickly as Odin could, but she spent much more time in religious training in a complex culture greatly increasing her understanding of humanity, diplomacy and human nature. This was a level of knowledge and insight due to her quality education that Odin never achieved and never even had access to.Early Accomplishments: Odin’s greatest accomplishment in the early part of the series was the defeat of the Vanir in a humane manner with little, but some, loss of life. His love Freya and ally Idunn were caught up in his spell and he was accidently separated from his love Freya. Ayesha as a mortal accomplished something similar although it involved the destruction of a ship of hostile Persian allies of over one thousand men. Both feats were accomplished with innovation and cunning and are certainly comparable.Rulership: Here the two diverge considerably. Odin basically abandoned his responsibilities to the Aesir and Asgard many times during the series. Ayesha never even considered such a thing, although like Odin, she would leave her station, but for limited periods of time to learn and gain knowledge before quickly returning. Since she had to wait for the return of the man she loved she would never be gone for long.In fairness to Odin he was looking for a way to rejoin his love Freya and was relentless in pursuing this goal. Ayesha was a dedicated scholar, seeking knowledge for its own sake but fearing the return of her lover in her absence she would quickly return to her station to await him.Within her kingdom Ayesha was feared, but not generally hated and she paid attention to the health and defense of her kingdom and always devoted effort and energy to its safety and prosperity. Odin rarely took part in rulership leaving this task to the capable and loyal, but abandoned wife Frigg.Here the distinction is more apparent between the two. Odin came to leadership of the Aesir suddenly and without a great deal of time to prepare. That he accomplished so much early on in the series is a tribute to Odin’s intelligence, but his later neglect cost his people dearly. He was a natural leader without having been really trained and prepared enough for the role. In all his actions later, he was sometimes successful in his covert actions and was always seeking ways to increase his power of sight so he could find a way to avert Ragnoarok at the cost of neglecting the basic needs of his kingdom for his leadership.Ayesha did not want rulership, but compared to Odin Ayesha was well prepared for the task of rulership placed upon her. She had extensive education in military, organization, religion, and governing skills which she was able to put to excellent use with her devotion to her subjects and filled with a drive only one seeking atonement can achieve. Ayesha was not a born leader. She was not a natural leader. She was educated and trained to be a leader and she accepted the role. Compared to Odin she was better at studying and understanding allies and threats.Treatment of others: in no area are leaders more often compared than in how they treat others. Here the two couldn’t be more different. Odin’s goal was the saving of humanity from the ravages of Ragnarok. He was a heroic warrior, quick and agile in his mind and actions. Any action, no matter how brutal or treacherous, was acceptable. While Odin was protective of his family and favored ones, his standing was under minded by the lack of enough Apples of Immortality for all the Aesir and his capricious manner in handing them out.In short Odin played favorites and it would dog him to the last battle with the fate of the hero Sigurd and others.He felt any sacrifice of others, even if sacrificed unwillingly was justified in averting Ragnarok. But all too often Odin’s capricious actions were to achieve the goal of reuniting with Freya rather than saving humanity.Ayesha, trained in ruler ship and judgement was ruthlessly fair, insuring justice and healing among her servants and was intolerant of insubordination, but not quick to kill without a good reason. Ayesha would have seen Odin’s fickleness, lack of loyalty to his devotees, and easy sacrifice of innocents as dishonorable and likely, shocking to Odin, as a sign of his spiritual weakness.Remember a major distinction between the two was their motive behind their actions. Odin sought to reunite with Freya and save humanity from Ragnarok. Ayesha had shown weakness in her faith in the past and was determined to atone to Isis for her lack of faith, with her challenge being to survive an unrequited love.The two could have been allies, but would never be friends.Strategy: Odin was forced by circumstances due to the weakness of Asgard into a strategy of covert limited war against his enemies. He often struggled to gain an advantage by improving his magical sight depending on superior information to provide the advantage over his enemies. Committing himself was always limited and done under careful circumstances. Minor warriors and allies could be easily sacrificed as life was cheap in this world.Ayesha, like Odin, did not choose leadership and under her own chosen circumstances was reclusive and scholarly and she would have, like Odin, gone to extraordinary efforts to gather information. Among her many powers, I will go into later, one that would have been useful was the ability to read minds. A real advantage in gaining information, but when the information would be put to use in say a military action, she would have committed herself more quickly to achieve decisive results with her actions tailored to more inspire shock and awe in her adversaries in a desperate effort to spare the lives of her servants.Choosing officers: While using hidden and covert often action on his own Odin did make use of heroes to carry out tasks for him in the Runeblade stories with mixed results. Tyr, Odin’s trusted and capable champion was assigned the Serkland front in the war, Ayesha had less occasion to use officers to help in her ruler ship compared to Odin, but she did make use of such in the novel “She and Allan” but she did follow her chosen officer closely and intervened at the most opportune moment to over whelm her enemies, whereas Odin typically left his heroes to their own devices until they returned while he was addressing other concerns.Ruling Asgard: Here without question they would have been very different. Odin razed old Vanaheim, leaving only Freya’s old hall full of books with knowledge, replacing it with new halls for the Aesir. Ayesha did not tend to replace old structures and would have left it intact and would have made excellent use of Freya’s hall to gain new knowledge contained therein, a predictable course of action considering her scholarly background and she would have rarely traveled whereas Odin disliked ruling and was restless being separated from Freya and found every pretext to leave Asgard under Frigg’s rule, and quest for magic that could be used to reunite with Freya and resist the onslaught of Ragnarök. Ayesha would have easily fallen into both Freya’s and Frigg’s roles of study and administration and would have spent a great deal of time studying threats to Asgard.Comparison of historical characters. General George Crook.Interestingly Odin’s style of leadership has multiple historical examples and for Americans with some knowledge of military history it is interesting to compare General George Crook, a general in the 1800’s with a particular skill in diplomacy and unconventional warfare. He is most famous for his command in Arizona during the Apache wars. When first assigned he traveled alone or in small groups, getting to know the land and the people including local Apache leaders eventually getting to know his enemies so well that he was able to conduct a very effective campaign that encouraged the majority of Apaches to ally with the Americans and although the Apaches wars were long and savage, many lives on both sides were saved that would otherwise have died in a more brutal widespread military campaign.This brings to light the distinctive nature of much of Matt Larkin’s characters. Despite the mythic fantasy world, they live in they are distinctively human in a way we can all relate to with genius, endearing features flaws and failures.What if Odin and Ayesha met and had to work together?I wouldn’t want to pit these two pitiful, yet powerful love birds, against each other. Their powers in the stories they are in are quite disparate, but a more intriguing idea is sometimes leaders have to work together.Let’s assume a situation in which Ayesha was instructed by Isis to go through a magical portal to assist Odin in dealing with Ragnarök. Ayesha would have entered Odin’s world quietly without fanfare much like Odin would and used her magical powers to gain information and prepare plans to aid Asgard. Likely Odin would not have known of the existence of this elusive magical creature for some time. Odin would not have been easy to find for Ayesha due to his constant movement making it difficult for his enemies to attack him, but there is one place and one individual that Ayesha would have sought out and waited for Odin and that would have been the Svartalfar smith and later prince of the Svartalfar Volund.Don’t get me wrong. Ayesha would have loathed Volund and would have only spared him for the service he would render Odin. Volund made many magic items of great power for Odin, but all were made with an eye to increasing his own power even more. Ayesha would have seen through this and overwhelmed Volund and commanded him to make items for Odin; soon the smith would have been merrily banging away at his forge giving items to Odin like Santa Claus handing out gifts at Christmas.Odin would not have been grateful for the help. Rather he would have been suspicious and fearful of such a powerful creature and rightly so. Early in his life Odin made himself a blood brother to Loki in gratitude, but in later years Odin was not generous or protective or even interested in making new friends and Ayesha was not the warm diplomatic type as Idunn was.Remember Ayesha was educated and magical, but without the natural instincts and warmth Odin and some of his friends had. Things would likely have gotten worse between Odin and Ayesha when she turned her attention to two extremely dangerous threats. Loki and his treacherous, murderous wife Sigyn.Their dark secrets would have likely been quickly discovered and Ayesha always reacted quickly to threats. She would have moved to immediately kill or imprison Loki and certainly would have slain Sigyn without mercy, but only after revealing the true nature of both; Ayesha easily being able to read their minds and call up the ghost of Sif for questioning and confirmation. There are many other ways Ayesha could have assisted Odin in his efforts and just as much they would have clashed.Except for one situation where they would have cooperated.It is likely Ayesha would have felt sympathy for the deeply wounded Odin and the loss of his love Freya and used her considerable powers to unite them as she would have understood his pain.This calls attention to the timeless issue that even in the grim darkness of Norse mythology and Matt Larkin’s creative retelling of the stories love must be a part of the story to make it a story worth telling.

The final battle. We meet heroes from earlier books again. An epic struggle for the salvation of the world. And the tragic working of a fate that is inescapable. Finally we begin to understand Loki and why he as acted so ambiguously throughout the centuries he has lived.Matt Larkin has written a phenomenal series. It is a retelling of the vast collection of Norse myths in a way that is realistic enough to imagine it could have even happened for real. To achieve this while at the same time staying true to the original stories themselves is a balancing act that can only be achieved by a brilliant writer.

I don't want to believe it's over. What an amazing series this has been, I've laughed and I've cried. I've been angry with the characters whenever they did something wrong and proud yet terrified for them when they fought so hard to do right.Larkin has brought Norse mythology to life in an unforgettable way in a series you'll want to return to over and over.

Matt Larkin saved the best of this soul-wrenching saga for last. It was painful to read, but such a fantastic close to this series, and lots of incentive to read the other books in this setting. I really can't say enough about this epic rich, detailed universe.

I’ve read all of Mr Larkin’s “Escathon Cycle” books. This last installment was the most difficult to read. The story spends a good amount of time engaged in philosophical debates, “what if this, what if that happened instead of X”... it was quite taxing to read this last book. All that was missing was the Violin music playing in the background... This philosophical debates or whatever you want to call them, was like an elephant inside a Fiat car, or a Mini-cooper... Does that look good to you? To each their own right? If you read carefully, one of the characters in the end, leaves this series open... If you read Mr Larkin’s closure notes at the book’s end he states: “But this is only one piece of the greater Eschaton Cycle. Each series inter meshes with the others in a kind of tapestry, meaning in whatever order you read them, each adds to the picture of the whole”. I wish I had known that before investing so much time reading these books.I really liked how creative the author is by using mythology to bring new stories to life. He has obviously done his research and put down the hours with Norse Mythology.I did not like all the philosophical debate, specially this last book has a good amount of it, it feels to me, that it distracts the reader from the main story. I also did not like the fact that the story strives to be so much, in the end it feels as way too little butter spread on a toast of bread... (badly paraphrasing Bilbo Baggins).The editors need to give this book another pass and correct some style and grammar errors, they are minimal but they are still there.Three stars for creativity, minus one for the “Philosophy Class” and minus one for a story that feels like it wants to be every where, all the time, from Indian and Mayan myths to only Thor’s hammer knows what... To those of you wondering who in the nine realms is Lady Chandi, here is what the Encyclopedia Britannica says about her:“Chandi, (Sanskrit: “The Fierce”) also called Chandika, demon-destroying form of the Hindu goddess Shakti, particularly popular in eastern India. She is known by various names, such as Mahamaya (“Great Magic”) or Abhaya (“She Who Is Without Fear”). Her representation is similar to that of Durga, another form of Shakti. She is shown with either 8 or 10 arms, seated on a lion vehicle. Hundreds of folktales and songs tell of her exploits. She is the central figure of an extensive medieval Bengali literature known as Chandi-mangal, the most famous of which is that of Mukundarama Chakravarti (c. 16th century).“ In the end, Thor gives the best line I read in this book... “No one likes a hammer in the @r$e!”.