Genre: Urban Fantasy, Fantasy, Mithology, Magic, Paranormal
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 384
Published July 16th 2013 by Tor Books
Goodreads

Synopsis:

New York Times bestselling author Susan Krinard launches her first urban fantasy series
Centuries ago, all was lost in the Last Battle when the Norse gods and goddesses went to war. The elves, the giants, and the gods and goddesses themselves were all destroyed, leaving the Valkyrie Mist one of the only survivors.
Or so she thought.
When a snowy winter descends upon modern-day San Francisco in June, Mist’s quiet existence starts to feel all too familiar. In quick succession, Mist is attacked by a frost giant in a public park and runs into an elf disguised as a homeless person on the streets…and then the man Mist believed was her mortal boyfriend reveals himself to be the trickster god, Loki, alive and well after all these years.
Loki has big plans for the modern world, and he’s been hanging around Mist for access to a staff that once belonged to the great god Odin. Mist is certain of one thing: Loki must be stopped if there is to be any hope for Earth. But the fight is even bigger than she knows….
Because Loki wasn’t the only god to survive.
Rating: 3/5

It might have happened many times to some of you when starting to read a book. The moment when you start to read a book you try to get accustomed to the author’s style, to the main plot and it’s details that are many times given in the first chapter(s). When I started reading Mist I was a little scared (will not lie, I was quite scared) that some elements would not stick into my head since I found an abundance of information about mythology in the first pages. I kept reading the book nevertheless, since every book has its quirks and I understood that some elements had to be presented to the reader (quite too many from the start though).
In the next chapters the action was more to my like, bringing the main character in the modern San Francisco. I am sad to say that after reading the book I did not bond with Mist, the protagonist of the book.
Mist is a 2000 years old Valkyrie which gets to live in San Francisco with humans *2000 years later* after her world, the Aesir, gets destroyed. She and other Valkyries recieve important gifts that they must protect. Mist has the honour to recieve from Odin the Spear Gungnir.
Her life in SF seems to go smoothly and some images from the past still haunt her from time to time but she belives that her life next to a man named Eric is a peaceful and normal one. She will unfortunately see that her expectations are going to be shatterd into pieces since the Spear Gungnir will be stolen although it was protected really well. Things that Mist had trust into will have a different turn and the past will come back to haunt her for real this time.
It was interesting to see a combination between the human world and Mist’s world (frost giants, elfs, Gods, Alfars…). Mist will find out that her world is not entirely dead and Loki, one of the previous attackers and Mist’s enemy will make his appearance.
A battle that Mist must fight is hard but becomes harder when she finds out much more about herself, about her origins and powers.
There is some romance included in this book (a few things just) but I did not found it to my liking (I won’t mention what this is about).
The villain of the book, Loki, somehow was better than I expected him to be but that is just my opinion.
The book includes both naration and dialogues. I think that they are in ballance or maybe there might be a slighty more dialogues but I did not notice exactly.
I really don’t know what to say exactly about this book (this usually doesn’t happen in my review as you might have seen until now) but I think that if you are too picky or unfamiliar to some mythology elements the book might not be a blast for you.

Quotes:
” He touched the side of his long, rather elegant nose. “A magician never reveals his secrets, and I am somewhat more than a magician. Let us say that the gods make a habit of underestimating me, to their lasting regret.” “
“The cost Mist might pay was as yet unknown, but Dainn knew he might not survive to find out. He fought to hold his ground and threw up a shield against the whirlwind, singing it into retreat with melodies of the hush of dawn and still summer days. But he could do nothing about the ice and flame and metal cutting him off from light, from air, from life itself.”