Angrboda's story begins where most witch tales end: with being burnt. A punishment from Odin for sharing her visions of the future with the wrong people, the fire leaves Angrboda injured and powerless, and she flees into the furthest reaches of a remote forest. There she is found by a man who reveals himself to be the trickster god Loki, and her initial distrust of him-and any of his kind-grows reluctantly into a deep and abiding love.
Their union produces the most important things in her long life: a trio of peculiar children, each with a secret destiny, whom she is keen to raise at the edge of the world, safely hidden from Odin's all-seeing eye. But as Angrboda slowly recovers her prophetic powers, she learns that her blissful life-and possibly all of existence-is in danger.
Angrboda must choose whether she'll accept the fate that she's foreseen for her beloved family-or rise to remake it.
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Long ago, when the gods were young and Asgard was new, there came a witch from the edge of the worlds.
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(@TitanBooks, 4 May 2021, 342 pages, ebook, copy from the publisher via # NetGalley and voluntarily reviewed)
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I knew I had to read The Witch's Heart when I read the premise. I'm a huge fan of Norse Mythology and have read a lot of retelling's and alternative versions. Loki is my favourite characters. The Witch's Heart touches on events I've read in other books but from a completely different perspective, that of Loki's giantess mistress and the mother of the monsters who will set the end of the world in motion. I couldn't wait to see where the author went with the story. I really loved this. Angrboda and her monstrous offspring are humanised in the book and I felt empathy for them and their plight against the arrogance of the God's, specially Odin. I thought this was amazing.
