Reviewed by Sarina
TITLE: Liesmith
SERIES: The Wyrd #1
AUTHOR: Alis Franklin
PUBLISHER: Penguin Random House Publishing
LENGTH: 308 pages
RELEASE DATE: October 7, 2014
BLURB:
At the intersection of the magical and the mundane, Alis Franklin’s thrilling debut novel reimagines mythology for a modern world—where gods and mortals walk side by side.
Working in low-level IT support for a company that’s the toast of the tech world, Sigmund Sussman finds himself content, if not particularly inspired. As compensation for telling people to restart their computer a few times a day, Sigmund earns enough disposable income to gorge on comics and has plenty of free time to devote to his gaming group.
Then in walks the new guy with the unpronounceable last name who immediately becomes IT’s most popular team member. Lain Laufeyjarson is charming and good-looking, with a story for any occasion; shy, awkward Sigmund is none of those things, which is why he finds it odd when Lain flirts with him. But Lain seems cool, even if he’s a little different—though Sigmund never suspects just how different he could be. After all, who would expect a Norse god to be doing server reboots?
As Sigmund gets to know his mysterious new boyfriend, fate—in the form of an ancient force known as the Wyrd—begins to reveal the threads that weave their lives together. Sigmund doesn’t have the first clue where this adventure will take him, but as Lain says, only fools mess with the Wyrd. Why? Because the Wyrd messes back.
REVIEW:
Sigmund Sussman is about as average an individual as you can get. Working in the IT department at the same company as his father, he still lives at home and his greatest aspirations include playing games with his friends and managing to dodge the latest company get together. When Sigmund is chosen to show a new hire by the name of Lain Laufeyjarson the ropes, he’s slightly annoyed but resigned to the invasion of his private corner of the office and Lain isn’t that bad a guy; a little weird but hey, who is he to judge? What starts out as a minor inconvenience quickly turns to friendship and then slowly morphs into more, however, but Lain is much more than he appears and Sigmund will soon have more to worry about then just bringing home his boyfriend to meet his dad.
I had no idea I needed a book like this in my life until I read it. Oh my god this was so good! Let me start off by saying that this isn’t your watered down ‘family friendly’ Norse Mythology you may have gotten a taste of in the Avengers. (Not that I have anything against Tom Hiddleston because damn, that man made Loki look good!) Really though, things for Loki were a lot worse than people may have realized in the original tales and this author brings some of that to light here, which was great to see.
I loved the blending of the Norse Gods and the modern world in this story, it just worked so well and it was entertaining to boot. The author managed to grab my interest right away and kept it through the entire story to the point that I resented having to put the book down for any length of time. There were a lot of different elements brought into the story but you really don’t need any prior knowledge of the mythology used in order to understand it as the author does a really good job of explaining just what’s going on. While there are a few parts of the book that threw me for a minute before I realized it was a memory and, while confused at first, I quickly got over it as each walk down memory lane gave one more piece to the puzzle of what’s really going on.
I adored this; it was creative and entertaining and I just love how everything was woven together. I foresee myself re-reading this one a lot and I am super excited to move onto the sequel. I kind of want to just recommend this to everyone for the uniqueness but if you’re a fan of mythology or urban fantasy in particular you should really enjoy this one.
RATING: 
BUY LINKS:
Penguin Random House Publishing