DNF: Odin’s Child | 60% | Upside-Down Books

Odin’s Child
by Siri Pettersen

Genre: Fantasy
Author: Siri Pettersen
Published: March 2021 [in English]
Publisher: Arctis
Pages: 519 [hardback]

DNF 60%

Thank you NetGalley for a copy of this in exchange for an honest review.

First thoughts

I just couldn’t get through this one, unfortunately. I tried so hard to push through this but I found the pace incredibly slow and despite making it to 60%, it just didn’t feel like this was going anywhere. I nearly guilted myself into keeping going but for now I’m putting it down. For such a long book, I really needed some more action and plot progression to keep me interested!

Odin’s Child

This is the story of Hirka who was born without a tail. She’s raised by an adoptive father but doesn’t know this until she’s nearly an adult. The story follows Hirka through her discovery of this fact and how she grapples with coming to terms with her identity. Her inability to wield the magic in this world brands her as an outcast and ultimately inspires her to run away. The plot largely revolves around setting up the world, the politics and introducing a good handful of supporting characters to beef up the story, as it were.

Why I DNF’d

In short, I got bored, and I was not inspired to pick the book up. If anything, this actually made me sail straight into a reading slump. As much as I loved the world that Pettersen was creating, and I did find the new race that is introduced in this book (humans with tails) interesting, the execution of the idea was dry and super slow. I felt that the 60% of the book that I did read honestly could’ve been done in a third of the page count. I couldn’t really tell you what plot progression even happened during this time, it’s all world-building.

The Might (magic) was also an interesting concept but considering the main plotline is that Hirka can’t access this magic, we are left wanting to see more of the magic of this world, and it never quite delivers.

So to sum up, this book is a slow burn that I couldn’t get into. There are so many great reviews out there for this where people have loved the world that Pettersen has created – but I just can’t count myself among them.