Beware the Eye of Odin

Prince Helgir has a problem.  He’s just come into possession of the Eye of Odin after a frost giant attacked his village.  Now he has to return it to its rightful owner, Mimir the Frost Giant King, before the next full moon or else he’ll suffer a painful death involving boils and decay.  Most of the people in his village won’t help him because they regard his very existence as a curse that killed his mother and father in succession.  The only people willing to help him are aged one-armed village smith Stigr, and Kadlin, who is convinced that she’s a Valkyrie.  

While some help is better than none, Helgir, is going to need a special edge to triumph in this quest.  Fortunately he has it in the axe known as Mischief’s Whisper.  Light as a feather and able to cut through anything, it’s the perfect weapon when going up against battle boars, trolls, and frost giants.  Never mind the fact that it’s supposedly made from part of the chain that’s meant to keep Loki bound in the world of fog.

“Beware the Eye of Odin” is a major departure from Doug Wagner’s other works in that it doesn’t take place in the present day or involve serial killers at all.  It’s a relatively straightforward quest story with a protagonist and his friends out to return the MacGuffin before the bad stuff happens.  There’s some other stuff about Helgir learning to control his weapon before it controls him, but it doesn’t depart from the expected fantasy storytelling rulebook.  

This may make the story sound pretty boring and it likely would be if not for artist Tim Odland.  It’s immediately clear from the start that he’s good with investing a lot of detail in the setting and that he’s great with the monster designs as well.  Particularly his gnarly, multi-headed trolls that are impressively disgusting to behold at any size.  Better still is that Odland also delivers when it comes to the action.  The flow of action is always clear to observe in his art, which helps maintain the impressive level of energy he brings to each encounter.

Though the Eye of Odin is returned to its proper owner at the end, its ending is ultimately pure sequel bait.  I’d be annoyed if the overall experience didn’t make me want to see more of the adventures of Helgir and his friends.  I will admit that’s mainly down to Odland’s art which elevates this experience and makes an action-heavy take on Norse Mythology entertaining to read.  I wasn’t expecting to cap this review off by saying that Wagner will need to up his game as a writer to match the quality of the art in this story for any potential follow-up, yet that’s exactly the case we have here.