Book Review: Grumpy Old Gods Vol 1

Confession time – I got accepted for their anthology Grumpy Old Gods Vol 3. Another confession – instead of doing my research, I only read their other stuff after I got accepted. Third confession – I liked it a lot more than I expected. As always, the review is completely honest and a true reflection of how I feel. I may have been accepted into a later anthology, but I wouldn’t have fibbed. We have all read books where the best thing you can say about them is that they were the perfect size to put under the table leg to stop it wobbling, and while I would have found something tactful to say if I didn’t like it, fortunately for my conscience, I loved this.

Grumpy Old Gods Vol 1 is a collection of thirteen stories from different authors, all of them about the former deities that are now out to pasture or somehow superannuated. The authors have taken the idea of the old gods and run with it. I don’t want to put in spoilers, but these are great stories. Some are just hilarious, others are sweetly sad.

It’s a great selection. Many of the stories go across more than one pantheon, so you get wonderful quotes such as, ‘Odin, Merlin, Zeus and Nubis sat around a table playing spades and debating the part humanity would play in the coming Apocalypse,‘ while others stick to one tradition and mythology. There is a great selection as well, as we have stories that refer to Norse, Greek, Egyptian and First Nation beliefs, which is wonderful to dip into.

I really enjoyed the excellent, well presented, well written stories. I am definitely going be reading Vol 2 just for pleasure, and I sincerely recommend this anthology.

Grumpy Old Gods: Volume 1 by [Wells, Vanessa, Key, Juneta, Gerlach, Katharina, Shaffer, Elizabeth, Klimek, Shawn, Janse van Vuuren, Ronel, Vanderlyle, Avery, McCleary, Elizabeth, Finaughty, Vanessa, Vetter, Tom] — Grumpy Old Gods Vol 1 is available at Amazon and on Kindle Unlimited

The Faerie Wall

Keep away from the wall, my child,

It keeps us from the faeries wild.

It keeps us from their faerie fear.

Keep away, my child, come here.

They blight the cows and cost us money

They steal the bees and take the honey

They spoil the butter in the churn

They cause the cakes and bread to burn

They steal our children, blight our wheat,

Ruin pigs and taint the meat.

Keep away from the wall, my dear,

Keep away, my child, come here.

A Sense of Wonder

red and white concrete house near mountain — Photo by Cassie Boca on Unsplash
A house in Iceland

I think of this time of year as something of a dreamtime. The weather is stormy, the colours are vivid and it feels like stories are in the air along with the whirling leaves. It’s the month of Halloween, and I’ve aimed to post something every day, whether it’s old or new, just to acknowledge that this time of year is sort of supernatural.

Hand on heart, I don’t believe in vampires or werewolves. I keep an open mind about ghosts and know that as a (really rubbish) Christian I ought not to believe in nature spirits. But I do believe that it’s fun to act as if you believe, as if there are wonderful worlds just beyond our view, and that there is a magic in the world – within reason of course.

I have tried to raise my son with a sense of wonder and curiosity in the world, along with my husband who is a consummate story teller himself. I started young. When my son was maybe three years old, we walked past a hole next to the pavement and I pointed at it and said that anything could live down there, even a dragon. That was a mistake. Son refused to walk past it. I had to pick him up and carry him. Later I had to explain to a nursery worker exactly why my son was talking about dragons on the way to school. He only calmed down when we told him that Daddy had gone to the dragon and punched it on the nose, so there wouldn’t be any trouble.

A few weeks later we passed a similar hole. I thought I had learned my lesson and told him that rabbits could live down there. Son was only three, but he gave me a look that said, ‘You’re saying rabbits, but you’re meaning dragons’.

That is why I love reading about the elves in Iceland. There is an article here about them. It’s not a question of whether the elves are real or not. It is all about a world where there is room to believe in them. It is about a place where you can accept a little magic without worrying about what people think. For me, it isn’t about the elves. It is the spirit of generous tolerance to other people’s harmless beliefs that needs celebrating. It is a thing of wonder and we need more of that in the world. Sometimes we need to believe that the elves’ church needs protecting or that there is a dragon down a hole, just for the magic of it.