similarly an effort was clearly made to denounce misogyny that ultimately failed miserably due to a variety of narrative decisions and jokes made throughout the book. His Loki doesn’t feel like a powerful god, but rather like a flawed being trying to make the most out of the situations and life he has in front of him. That slipperiness makes Loki, for all the modern enjoyment of a morally grey character, hard, in the end, to actually like. And constantly insulting the reader, which does nothing to keep me intrigued or wanting to continue.

And indeed, as it eventually turns out, he does, though we're assured that is something that will benefit us, in the end.There are other rough parts, as when the origin of humankind becomes a scene of scatology, prompting Loki to address the reader every so often as “arse-born”. I understand, he’s trying to come up with something new and exciting but his ideas don’t even make sense (not to speak of the lack of excitement). Loki himself is a complex and shrewd narrator whose role is framed with just enough meta-ness to make what he tells us relevant today, rather than being lost in a vaguely medieval Never-Never land.

Burgess also infuses the gods with humanity: Odin sacrifices his eye to gain further knowledge, and turns into a wreck of a man, everyone’s great-grandfather on the edge of death. And a great deal of the story is uncomplimentary enough to him that we might accept this, although it's also, perhaps, a story spun and pitched to meet our modern sensibilities, showing Loki as the one who preached love, who always counselled peace, who urged (and performed) diversity and tolerance.He falls completely in love (something he does several times throughout the novel, with other gods and goddesses).

Although I like the idea of the book, I think you really need to enjoy being insulted by the narrator and reading the wildest things. In spite of his cleverness and sparkling wit (or, perhaps, because of this…) Loki struggles to find his place among the old patriarchal gods of supernatural power and is constantly at odds with the god of thunder – Thor. Alongside the politics of Asgard, it charts the course of Loki’s many loves and families, from his mothering of Odin’s famous horse to his intense, turbulent, and, eventually, fatal relationship with Baldr the Beautiful – a tender and moving story of love that goes wrong, jealousy and a transitioning that is forbidden by society.

my other main nitpick if you allow me one more is the way the book dealt with the topic of homophobia and transphobia.