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Giants Of The Frost by Kim Wilkins
01/10/2006 . Source: Danny O'Connor 
pub: Gollancz. 432 page paperback. Price: £ 6.99 (UK). ISBN: 0-575-07721-2. Buy Giants Of The Frost in the USA - or Buy Giants Of The Frost in the UK  check out websites: www.orionbooks.co.uk and www.kimwilkins.com
In Norse legend the three sisters, the Norns, weave the fates of both men and gods. In this telling, the author Kim Wilkins has a modern woman, Victoria, on the warp and the Norse god Vidor, favoured son of Odin, on the weft of her weaving.
Victoria is a scientist who accepts a post on a weather station on a remote island in the Norwegian Sea as she is running away from a failed relationship. Strange things begin to happen on the island which is declared as haunted by some of the other workers on the station.
Meanwhile, Vidor has waited a thousand years for the re-birth of his mortal beloved, Halldisa. She was killed by Odin, because Vidor's love for her might divert him from his fate of saving his father's life at the time of Ragnorak - the end of the world. By degrees, Victoria's modern day scepticism is stripped away as she finds that she is the reincarnation of Vidor's first love. The hidden memories of that past life surface to convince Victoria of her destiny as Vidor's true beloved.
Vidor cannot reveal his true self to Victoria until she falls in love with him a second time due to the bargain that he made with Hel, the goddess of the underworld, at the time of her first death. In those intervening thousand years, Vidor has kept himself aloof from his family, the Aesir, who have all come to think of him as weak and despise him. Odin puts up with Vidor's aloofness only because of his ultimate foretold destiny.
Victoria and Vidor make plans to hide from Odin this time round and Vidor asks the Norns to change his fate to allow him to become mortal and have a long life with Victoria. Meantime, Vidor's half-brother Loki, in a fit of jealousy over Vidor's bondmaid, Aud, tells Odin of Victoria's reincarnation. Odin is as determined to kill Victoria this second time. This pushes Vidor to desperation to seek a weapon that can kill his father. In so doing, he sets in motion the events that will bring about the prophesised Ragnorak upon his family, the Aesir.
This is Kim Wilkins' sixth book for Gollancz so she must have something going for her. Up until two-thirds of the way through this one, I couldn't have told you what it was. Wilkins has demythologised the Norse gods to the extent that they are all petty drunkards who just happen to have a longer life-span and a stronger constitution than us mere mortals.
Her main character Victoria is two-dimensional chick-lit fodder at best. Her motivations are unconvincing and the pace of the modern story is pedestrian. All this changes when the author reveals Victoria's past-life as Halldisa. Only then does the character become believable. Again, in the early chapters, the author has Loki tell Aud more than once that Vidor is much more violent and nasty than she imagines but never shows the reader. Wilkins is at her best much later when she describes the depths of Vidor's love for Halldisa/Victoria. She describes the painful journey of how he literally went to Hel, the goddess of the underworld, and back for her and how he transforms himself from an unthinking brutish warrior into a lover deserving of the love that Halldisa has shown him. A little vignette of writing is where she describes the magical land of Idavid lost to a minor character Skripi the wood-wight. In an authorial desire to tie up loose ends at the end of the book, Wilkins changes the essential nastiness and dangerousness of Loki into a selfless being for no better reason than a happy ending for the character Aud.
I liked the last third of this book very much but I'm not sure that the price of having to read the first two-thirds was worth paying. Kim Wilkins is much more adept at handling fantasy and legend than she is at modern-day characters and their motivation.
Danny O'Connor
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