The Testament of Loki
Loki • Book 2
by Joanne M. Harris
Why You'll Love This
Loki escapes hell by hitching a ride inside a teenage girl's mind — and things get stranger from there.
- Great if you want: a sarcastic, self-serving god navigating the modern world
- The experience: fast and irreverent — reads more like a caper than an epic
- The writing: Harris writes Loki's voice sharp, slippery, and genuinely funny
- Skip if: you haven't read the first book — context matters here
About This Book
Ragnarök has come and gone, leaving Loki — trickster, betrayer, survivor — buried in the netherworld while the centuries pile up above him. When a crack in the modern world offers a way out, he takes it, slipping into an existence where the old gods are mythology and humans scroll past Norse legends on their phones. But freedom comes tangled with consequence: darker things have escaped alongside him, and Loki must navigate a reality he doesn't understand while outmaneuvering enemies who know exactly who he is. It's a story about what happens after the apocalypse, when a god built for chaos has to figure out what he actually wants to protect.
Harris writes Loki's voice with genuine wit — sharp, self-aware, occasionally tender in ways he'd rather not admit. The novel's real pleasure is watching a character defined by deception slowly become legible to himself, filtered through Harris's dry, precise prose and a modern setting that keeps the mythological stakes grounded and strange. Readers who enjoy unreliable narrators with genuine interiority will find this a quietly satisfying character study dressed up as a fantasy.
