Book Review: Norse Mythology

Neil Gaiman has recently released a new book entitled Norse Mythology.  This book, per the introduction, is a labor of love on Gaiman's part and he is trying to share his love of story as well as demonstrate how many stories are really very old, they are just retold in slight variations with new names for the characters.  However, I fear this ends up being his "Silmarillion": bookish, pedantic and missing the crafting required to have made it a whole rather than a collection of parts.

Between Muspell and Niflheim was a void, an empty place of nothingness, without form.  The rivers of the mist world flowed into the void, which was called Ginnungagap, the "yawning gap".

Gaiman has tried to piece together a set of myths into a whole story.  In my opinion, this does not work terribly well.  There are a bunch of episodes, almost like a sitcom that nearly resets at the end of each episode.  A few events have consequences later in the book, but relatively little.  I kept having flashbacks to a rendition of "You're a good man, Charlie Brown" as one parallel to this book.
More fascinating are the characters of Thor, Loki and Odin.  Thor is powerful, but yet makes bad choices and falls victim to his hubris (actually reminds me a lot of a certain current politician).  Loki causes trouble simply because he is bored.  He lies so well to people he does so just to see if he can get away with it.  Odin is wise and thoughtful but somehow never seems to lead action:  Thor and/or Loki are always taking care of the business at hand.  We also have a lot of giants of different types that are involved in the stories and as a result few humans.  But in many ways the gods (the Vanir and Aesir) and the giants are of recognizable human archetypes.  If one thinks of these as stories told to children, then adults who would exhibit the behaviors in the story could appear to be giants, so in a way it fits.
I found it to be disjointed, fairly pedantic (I mean at a few points, family history was being explained to the extent I thought I was reading Deuteronomy), and a struggle to keep my interest.  The end where Ragnarok was explained, (and this is the point: it was explained rather than it being a story told) it seemed a list of unrelated events.  Your mileage may vary and perhaps if you have already been submersed into this ethos, his re-telling might be splendid.  Gaiman has made a brave try, but unfortunately, I have to give it a C.