I think it’s almost an unspoken rule that all authors are readers. It’s hard to imagine that authors wouldn’t like reading. I’m an avid reader. Even if I don’t get a chance to read as much as I’d like to. But it’s something I’ve always done and always return to.
I listened to Sacha Black’s The Rebel Author Podcast a while back and she mentioned writing what you love, rather than what you know. She loves YA Fantasy and so that is what she writes.
I realised that’s very applicable. I love YA fantasy so that’s what I write. But I also love history and so I write historical fantasy. And vikings, I love vikings. So I write viking fantasy.
A classic thing that we authors always think about are potential comp titles. This is super important in order to see where our book fits into our market and what else our potential readers are reading. I do love a good viking story and I will make a blog post about viking inspired books I’ve read in a future post.
But in today’s post I thought we’d look at viking fantasy or viking inspired fantasy that I would like to read.
I look at this book almost every time I’m at the Sci-Fi Bookshop. It’s a standalone and features the story of the giantess Angrboda and her relationship with the trickster god Loki. It’s an interpretation of the Norse myths rather than about Vikings. It also appears to be a stand alone and I’m becoming more and more intrigued by stand alones. It has very good ratings as well. There's something about stand alones with very high ratings. I'm a fan of series, but it makes me feel like a lot of effort has been put into making one really good book with proper beginnings and ending and arcs, and I respect that.
I heard of this book before it came out from an agent at Stockholm Writer’s Festival when I pitched my book. It was not out back then, but I recently saw it on the shelf of New Releases at the Sci-Fi Bookshop. This arc seems very intriguing with a young disabled woman with a buried power who wishes to become a shield maiden. This seems to be a very good comp title to Visions of Ravens. What I'm super intrigued by is the connection to Beowulf and how myths and legends are used together. Again, this appears to be a stand alone, which I'm very much in favour of. I believe this is also Emmerish's debut which is exciting!
These two books are on my bookshelf and it’s ridiculous that I haven’t read them yet. One of my beta readers recommended The Gospel of Loki for me as well so I really should check it out. The Gospel of Loki and The Testament of Loki appear to be prequel novellas to the series Runemarks consisting of Runemarks and Runelight. It’s a bit unclear whether this is YA or adult. It might even be middle grade. I'm interested in how Harris approached the topic of magic in this one, and how it ties in with the runes.
There are more books on this list, but I will make a part 2 to this post.