Review: Skadi's Saga #1 by Phil Tucker

Blurb:

Death was only the beginning.

Skadi's world is shattered when an empire razes her home. Fleeing to her uncle's remote stronghold on the dreaded Draugr Coast, she vows to become a shieldmaiden and avenge her kin. But there's a truth she keeps hidden: she has already died once, only to be resurrected by a cruel goddess, and gifted with the power to weave fate itself.

Amidst a landscape where carnivorous mermaids lurk in icy waters, undead haunt the mist-laden mountains, and gods walk among mortals, Skadi's quest for vengeance unfolds. Skadi's Saga is a fierce saga of revenge, rebirth, and the brutal beauty of Norse myth.

Review:

Phil Tucker is a name that needs no introduction among lovers of progression fantasy and litrpg. His “Immortal Great Souls” is one of my all-time favorite progression sagas. Each one of his books in that series has expanded the definition of what I’d consider to be imaginative world-building. And this book, though unrelated, is no different in that regard.

While the rest of this review does go into some more detail about the backdrop this story is set in, if you have enjoyed Phil’s writing before, just go read the book. It's worth it. 

We will come back to the world building elements, but first let’s talk about our protagonist, Skadi Styrbjörnsdóttir. Because, for starters, she is one of the most impressive main characters I have come across in this genre. Born a Jarl’s daughter, and groomed to be a “peace-weaver”, Skadi should have led a comfortable, unremarkable life—married off for political alliance. But that was not her wyrd.

The book opens with an explosive betrayal and things only get more violent from there. When a prospective love-interest tries to threaten Skadi into a treacherous alliance, what does she do? Give in to a life of misery? Come up with a diplomatic solution? Of course not!

‘Skadi drew her hatchet from its loop at her waist, took a single step forward, and buried its gleaming edge in Naddr’s face. The blade bit deep as it broke the architecture of his skull.’

Beautiful!

She sees her village burn, her people enslaved, the ones close to her slaughtered. Her anger is righteous, her wrath fearsome, but having received no formal training in warfare, and equipped with nothing but a seax, her quest for revenge had no hope. Faced with enemies too numerous and too powerful, a brutal death was the only future that awaited Skadi—but the Goddess Freja had other plans. 

‘she thought of her mother in the great hall, the hundreds of friends and people she knew who were fighting for their lives even as she lay there, and with a grimace she rose like a vengeful ghost, shivering and dripping and without a weapon but for the two-inch blade in her fist.’

The blessing of the Goddess equips Skadi with a unique ability that has the potential to offset all her disadvantages, provided she is willing to put in the work. 

Nothing is truly free though, and the attention of Gods is akin to a double-edged blade. For what has been given can just as easily be taken away, and many of her opponents are blessed as well, by various Gods, to varying extents. And thus we have the whole spectrum of powerful characters whom Skadi has to either befriend, or defeat, before she can step up her game and exact revenge against the Archaen empire that has taken it all away from her.

‘“Enjoy your betrayal, oathbreaker.” Her words carried loud and clear, and a deep, resonant sense of power settled upon her. “You will lose everything that you love, but death will not come for you till you beg for it on bended knees.”’

While some of the secondary characters do feel like NPCs in a game, however, where the author’s world building truly shines is Skadi’s gift that enables her to see threads of fate, or in the parlance of the Norse mythos, their wyrds. Thus, while others can only just guess around the extent to which their Gods would be able to help them in the time of their need, for Skadi it is a measurable, actionable metric. This gift serves as a wonderful instrument to seamlessly pull in gamelit elements into what is otherwise an epic fantasy.

‘we must relish our victories where we find them. In this world, they are few and far between.’

I am generally not a fan of litrpg, and have given up on some of the most widely acclaimed titles of this genre, however in the context of this book the game like elements are so elegantly blended in with the lore that we never get that feeling that we are just randomly thrown into an arbitrarily architected “System” with a set of unexplained rules and restrictions that just have to be accepted as is.

The scope of this story is immense, and in the first book we see but the first few steps of Skadi’s journey. Nevertheless, what I saw here has already convinced me to devour the rest of the series, and chances are that you’d be equally engrossed.

“War waits for no man. Or woman. You wish to train? We begin. Now.”

So hop on to this fast-paced adventure and watch Phil Tucker’s magic unfold. There is action, there is suspense, and the world the author has woven, drawing deep inspiration from the Norse mythology, is just breathtaking and immersive.

“Laugh and weep and give your passions full vent. Only then will she sit easy in the great hall, and only then will you be healed of your loss.”