I love the Goddess Girls series, but these past few volumes, I've fallen hopelessly behind. I still haven't read Eos's book, even though I've had it almost a year. I may tackle it and the Little Goddess Girls ones after Thunder Girls.
Thunder Girls is basically Goddess Girls, but with Norse mythology instead of Greek. This first book originally published in May 2018 and sat on my pile after I read a few chapters. I'm not well-versed in Norse myth, so I took a break to read a Norse mythology book to give myself some more background. Then came Hurricane Michael and my copy got wet. I managed to save it and bring it along with me when I moved. The second book came out and shipped the day before the hurricane and somehow miraculously made it to me when I was living in the hotel room here before getting into our first apartment. I picked up Freya's book again a few months ago, got 2/3 done and then got distracted from it AGAIN.
It's not that it's a bad book. I'm just that easily distracted. I read a good dozen things at the same time, if not more. But today...today I vowed to finish it and I did! Read it from cover to cover, then donated my wiggly-paged copy to the Little Library box in my apartment complex. I had bought a fresh copy months ago.
This first book, featuring Freya, introduces us to the world of the Thunder Girls. There's just been a war between the Vanir and Aesir, and Odin decides to create a school called Asgard Academy. He brings students from all nine worlds (supposedly...we have yet to see two worlds represented) together at the school in order to foster good relationships between the worlds. Plants, as Freya's twin brother Frey says, are affected by negativity. Yggdrasil, the World Tree, will be endangered if the worlds don't all get along.
Freya does not want to move to Asgard to attend the school. She and Frey are Vanir and she doesn't trust the Aesir after the war, which they said was started by the twins' nurse, who they view as more of a grandmother. Their mother is briefly mentioned as an earth goddess who travels a lot. No mention of a father.
A quick interjection here. You know how the first rule of Goddess Girls is Do Not Expect Accurate Greek Mythology? Yep. Same applies here, because we're already veering off course.
In Norse myth, Freya and Frey's father was Njord. In Thunder Girls, Njord is still a Vanir, but he's their same age and their friend. Their mother is Njord's "unnamed sister-wife," according to Wikipedia. In Thunder Girls, she's called Nerthus. Nerthus is actually a Germanic goddess, but there are theories that she's also this sister-wife.
I'm not going to look everyone up, but I'm just saying there's going to be a lot of flexibility here, as in Goddess Girls.
The main plot of the book is that Freya doesn't believe she has any magical skills. She has a jewel named Brising that she gets cryptic predictions from, but she loses it on her way to school. So she spends most of the book doing a succession of plots: trying to get her brother and their friends to return home and give up going to school, trying to find Gullveig, trying to figure out the last prophecy she got from Brising, trying to recover Brising from the dwarves. But what she really does is threaded throughout the story itself: her most magical skill is her ability to create friendships, which is very important to Odin.
It was a pretty good story, but got bogged down a bit with all the world-building.
There are a lot of characters introduced. I'll list them off here so I don't have to do it again for each book.
VANIR:
Freya: Goddess of love and beauty. Very into fashion and jewelry-making. Predicts the future using Brising, which ends up being turned into a necklace. Has a marble that turns into a cart pulled by two giant silver cats. Gets constant fanmail from Midgard fanboys. She's basically Aphrodite from Goddess Girls only less boy-crazy.
Frey: Twin brother of Freya. God of nature.
Njord: God of the sea. Collects shells.
Kvasir: Not much is said about him. It'll be interesting to see how he's used, because he doesn't have a good ending in myth.
AESIR:
Sif: Not much said about her yet, but she's a shapeshifter with golden hair. She's really into hair accessories.
Idun: Brunette to Freya and Sif's blondeness. Her thing is apples and the juice she makes keeps everyone young.
Loki: Already causing trouble in the first book, but also working with Odin.
Thor: Red-haired action boy. He's a bit like Hercules in Goddess Girls.
Bragi: God of poetry
Od: Freya's crush. A quieter boy who's a bit awkward around girls. Terrible with direction, gets lost a lot.
Odin: Principal. You know Odin.
Frigg: Co-principal. Wife of Odin. Knits a lot of celestial stuff like stars and clouds, but when she uses yarn to create actual objects, they turn out a bit off.
Heimdall: Protects the Bifrost bridge.
GIANTS:
Angerboda: A white-haired frost giant whose name means "distress-bringer." Crush on Loki. (In myth, they're married.) Doesn't like Freya. She's the main "mean girl," like Medusa in Goddess Girls before she turned out nicer.
Skade: Half-frost giant, half-Aesir. When the other giants go to full size, she only goes halfway that big. She has black and white hair and is the athletic, tough one. She's the goddess of skiing. She's also a huntress, so definitely the Artemis-like character. She's really into winter stuff. In myth, she had a failed marriage to Njord, so I'm curious to see if their relationship will be hinted at. I'm getting the feeling she'll be my favorite of the Thunder Girls. I do wish they'd kept her original name spelling from her appearance in the Goddess Girls Girl Games super special though. "Skadi" makes me want to pronounce it correctly. "Skade" makes me go German with it and then I say the ending syllable wrong.
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