Sprightly characters animate this otherworldly story of wonder that delivers loads of charm.
In Baumeister’s satirical urban fantasy, the Norse god Loki reluctantly helps his father, Odin, who may be deceiving him.
Loki doesn’t mind living among humans on Midgard (the Asgardian term for Earth). In Boston, he attends support groups and has befriended a fellow aspiring writer (and tax attorney) named Kurt. One day, at a Sexaholics Anonymous meeting, Loki spots a familiar face he hasn’t seen in 800 years: “It’s me, Sunshine,” the woman announces. Evidently, Odin, the All-Father, wants Sunshine and her sisters (the three Norns, Fate’s handmaidens) to help restore all the gods’ powers. The reason the gods have lost their potency and residency in Valhalla has something to do with Odin helping Adolf Hitler, a transgression that some, including Sunshine’s sisters, blame on Loki. Surely, the Norns can do what the All-Father asks, so long as he promises not to “meddle in politics.” When Loki travels to New Valhalla in Germany, he discovers that Odin, who may or may not be tied to a planned assassination of a woman currently running for political office in Germany, needs a favor: All Loki has to do is infiltrate the Viking Brotherhood, a right-leaning gang, and make certain no one is murdered. It sounds simple enough, but one can’t always be sure what Odin is cooking up (“Odin’s really good at deceit when he wants to be”). But who else can Loki trust? Two-thirds of the Norns don’t like him, his relationship with his brother, Thor, is less than ideal, and Kurt’s puzzling link to Sunshine makes Loki extra cautious.
Baumeister’s often tongue-in-cheek tale of deities on Earth is an entertaining read. Loki lives with various mythological Norse figures, including cherub-faced Hel, the Goddess of Death, who adopts the look of a harmless teen, and the Fenris Wolf, a “super-sentient support animal” (and Loki’s offspring); gods-in-disguise is a lighthearted recurring theme. (Kurt knows Loki as Gustav Johansson, Hel poses as an annoyed, gum-chewing daughter, and Thor can never quite convincingly reframe his chiseled, bulky self.) Loki narrates throughout, consistently adopting a playful tone, as when he shares his thoughts about a parking garage in Germany: “Apparently, there’s a level below the lowest official level of the garage and another one below that. Is this a German thing?…I mean, it’s weird, right?” The characters are multi-layered—the protagonist, who resents Thor (whom Odin clearly favors) and has genuine affection for Sunshine after centuries apart, is the most engaging. Others in the cast also stand out, from Kurt, whose involvement is mysterious, to some Viking Brotherhood members who are memorable in their own ways (“he’s no rocket scientist. Let’s be clear about that. Married his cousin’s cousin for starters”). Intermittent flashbacks, set mostly in the 20th century, further develop the characters; Loki lives on the cold streets of Paris in 1953, where he has a welcome reunion. The tension is kept at a constant high—Loki has good reason to be wary of nearly everyone surrounding him, and it’s a feeling that doesn’t easily go away.
Sprightly characters animate this otherworldly story of wonder that delivers loads of charm.Pub Date: March 11, 2025
ISBN: 9781960451026
Page Count: 332
Publisher: Stalking Horse Press
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2026
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.
Stockett heads to Mississippi for another historical novel about feisty women.
This time, perhaps recalling criticisms of cultural appropriation in The Help (2009), she sticks to feisty white women, with one exception. The setting is Oxford in 1933. For two miserable years, 11-year-old Meg has lived in “the Orphan,” a county asylum for parentless girls. Chairlady Garnett—a villain so one-note she’d twirl a mustache if she had one—makes it her mission to ostracize the older girls she deems unadoptable, stigmatizing them as offspring of the “feebleminded” mothers who abandoned them. She particularly has it in for smart, sassy Meg, who refuses to believe her mother’s mysterious disappearance was deliberate. Elsewhere in Oxford, Birdie Calhoun comes to visit her sister Frances, who married a wealthy banker, to ask for money on behalf of their mother and grandmother back in Footely. Frances isn’t thrilled by this reminder of her impoverished small-town origins. But she’s trying to climb up in Oxford society by volunteering at the Orphan, the asylum’s books need to be done before the state inspector shows up in a few weeks, and Birdie is a bookkeeper. Having neatly arranged to keep Birdie in town and draw these two storylines together, Stockett goes on to spin a compulsively readable yarn with enough plot for a half-dozen novels. Birdie and Meg become friends, Meg is adopted despite Garnett’s best efforts, Meg’s mother turns up at the Orphan demanding to know where her child is—and that’s less than a quarter of the way through a long, winding narrative that keeps piling on more dramatic developments until all loose ends are neatly, if hastily, wrapped up in the final pages. Stockett might be making a point about Southern women facing facts and standing up for themselves, but mostly this is just a satisfyingly twisty tale that should make a great miniseries.
Fans of Stockett’s bestselling debut will love this engaging follow-up.Pub Date: May 5, 2026
ISBN: 9781954118812
Page Count: 656
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
BOOK REVIEW
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
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