The relationship between Violet and Vibeke is so fucked up and yet I can't help but root for those two crazy kids. What does that say about me?

The last part of this book was quite shocking and now I can't wait to start the third book.

Really well executed, and a prose improvement from the last outing. Neither are in a style that is my usual reading fare, but this is beautifully layered and hits some seriously difficult material more honestly than almost anything else I've read.

For a wetdryvac that doesn't connect to humans very well, the approach to character motivation and interaction made a hell of a lot more sense than I usually find, and while hitting some seriously painful material, did so in a manner where character interactions didn't feel contrived. Well observed social cause and effect, even - and particularly, I suppose - within abuse structures.

Things that kept me reading beyond that: The comfortable home-ness described in many ways throughout. The ungodly insertions of pop-culture, puns, black humor, and silliness that neither undercut nor was undercut by the regularly brutal material.

Highly recommended IF one has a strong stomach. Recommending anyway even without the strong stomach - a great ride - but one might need a bag every now and then.

The best of the series, Ragnarök furthers the already interesting characters and world - and makes you hurt. Put any happy thoughts out of your head, this one is pretty brutal.

Ragnarök is a balanced book. It has just the right mix of action, character development, and conflict. It goes off the rails a bit toward the end as it leads into the third of the trilogy and, while I do recommend reading Guðsríki if you enjoy the series, if there had only been the two novels I would have come away just as satisfied since this one makes up for the missteps of the third.

This book shows that Ari Bach has chops, and I'm looking forward to further books.

Oh boy what a wild ride.

It's very clear this was made for the big screen, and honestly I hope it makes it because I will watch the heck out of that trilogy. Something I've noticed with this series is there's a lot of telling us what's going on instead of showing us, but it somehow works? Normally I'm screaming at authors to show me what's going on, don't just tell me, but here it works and it's very strange. I'm not sure why. My theory is there's so much action, it just flows better.

The only thing I didn't totally enjoy this time around was Violet's feelings towards Vibs, especially the way she dealt with it. Their trip to Mars was really cute and well done, but I found myself wishing for the action to come back. It felt very long and drawn out, and honestly Violet's constant pining for Vibs and begging to get her into bed got old fast.

Spoiler

Especially after the attempted rape oh my god I'm still wondering why that was included. It helped a bit with Violet's character development, but it bothered me so much that Vibs got together with her after that. The problem was addressed and clearly stated as a probpem, Vibs even says their relationship is incredibly unhealthy, but wow that whole subplot still bothered me.

The jumping to the past and different relevant plot points was very disorienting plotwise. This was a great example of how this would work great in a movie, but doesn't translate so well to book form. The information was relevant, although that wasn't always readily apparent, but it was useful and entertaining. I'm sure a lot of it was done for suspense, but I just really didn't care about some previously unknown party, I want to know what's happening to our characters. Which is great because that makes me want to continue reading.

I LOVED the twist at the end. And I loved the ending. I'm very excited for book three now, cliffhangers are my enemies I swear. Really though, this book was full of action right from the beginning. This series is so great in that aspect. I also love that the bad guys and good guys are all really terrible people. As characters, they're great. I love reading about them and the crazy stunts they get into, but if I ever met any of these people in real life, I would run the other way.

My main hope for book three is more walruses.

Not as good as I hoped, but it's not like I can really say I'm disappointed.

(note: some mild/less mild spoilers throughout)

Ragnarok is an action-packed book from beginning to end. Seriously. Action-packed. If action, science, and fighting isn't your thing, you may want to try something else. Speaking of, action REALLY isn't my thing. But I endure, as always, for the downtime. I like the characters. I love the world-building. The plot, and the norse connections I am slowly finding, are awesome. You just got to sit through some action to get anywhere.

The book takes place like, two years? after Valhalla. It's not very different, but there is a lot of references to things you never get to see, or else get explained to you later. It's sort of disjointing- you get the feeling you missed a book somewhere along the line.

There's this feeling, throughout this book and far more than in Valhalla, that the world presented is really, really big and the Ari is just presenting some small tale from it. Like he's just drawn a box, and that's what you get- spies and guns. But elsewhere, unseen, a whole hell of a lot is present. It gets confusing, and a lot of the writing works off of this expansive world in that it just sort of assumes you know what is going on.
It's good in that books should do that- too much exposition can weigh you down. But it's bad in that, if you are easily confused, you will be confused.

This book has been determined as the book where "Shit gets fucked up" by our illustrious author Ari. This is true! There's also a plot twist cliffhanger kind of ending. This is also true! I'm going to talk more about the end closer to the end of the review, but I will say, the book does live up to its promise- in fact, it's basically centered around it. To somewhat odd degrees.

Violet, our violent friend, is further defined as a character. All our V team buddies are. However much I enjoy them, though, I will admit I am finding it harder and harder to really sum anyone up. Violet is still sort of simple- though now 'dangerously horny' can be added to her list of traits. But Vibeke is less of a 'hardcore violent book nerd' and more of a '??? smart violent gal'. I really don't know. She doesn't feel to have changed much, but a lot of her development, while good, is... somehow off.
The boys feel somewhat missing from the first half. In the second half, we do see Veikko go from 'humor nerd' to 'deathwish demonspawn', but Varg basically stays exactly the same. He seems weirdly missing, actually. I know about him, but I still don't feel like I hear much about him. He is 'tough sex man' through and through.
More on Veikko: UH. As interesting as his philosophy is, as cool as his drive is, his developments seems somewhat sudden, though not implausible.

This book is full of references to Norse myth, something I truthfully know nothing about. However, googling things was a smart idea. I mean, smart in that it was informative. If you see a name, googling it MIGHT just fill you in on a key part of the plot. This is cool, but I'm sure it takes some surprise away from people who already know norse myth. Still, it's super fun.

Am I sounding too negative about this book? I seem to always do that. The problem is, I can't really name anything more positive! I feel like I liked it. But I did spend a lot of time thinking back to book one, and thinking how much I enjoyed book one. Is Ragnarok better? Is it worse? I have no idea.
I like Wulfgar for some unknown reason. I enjoy some of the jokes. The world building is fun. The internet, no matter how insane it is to follow, is very imaginative. The backstories for old, new, and even unimportant characters are some of my favorite bits. Sal, who I believe is a reference to Hal at this point, is my new fav. And it truly was upsetting to see

Spoiler

like EVERYONE DIE FOREVER

. I'm curious as to how the next book will WORK and what it will be about with the way this one ended!

But

Spoiler

Violet and Vibeke's relationship is BAD. Not badly written, but uncomfortable. I don't ship these two in the slightest anymore. The whole rape and abuse aspect is so unnerving

The book is obviously centered on 'ragnarok' as a bit of it's theme. So naturally, things go to hell to extreme degrees through crazily hard to follow politics and action. The end is weird, but I have to say this: I have a habit (badly) of going back and reading the end of the book. So yeah, I read the last few lines. But hey! I seriously had no idea this was how it was going to end. Intense man. Good cliffhanger.
The last 25% of the book is the final climax, and the set up of this climax, and the reasonings, both make sense and do not. I still do not understand all of our precious hellchild's reasonings, and honestly, it felt like every chapter was the end one. Don't get me wrong, there were no late timeskips or anything near the end, but it still felt weirdly muddled, full of death and false ends. Our actual end feels quick by comparison- the whole last portion sort of feels like the start of a new book, or at least something that belonged earlier on in this one.

I did spent a lot of time being confused. I got bothered by action scenes, and their frequency. I think it's safe to say this isn't really a book series meant for me- but hey, I'll still be reading the third one. Also, note the four star rating? It's still a good book, no matter how much I gripe, and probably worth a read.

Spoiler

not a spoiler, but while I'm talking about griping, that cover! It does not look all that clean. I understand what Ari is going with here, the whole deterioration, but it still is not a very pretty cover. In valhalla, the pencil-y artwork was fine with a black background, but this brick thing just doesn't work for me. Not professional enough. I am nitpicking sorry

I'm so disturbed I don't know what to rate this

Ragnarok is perhaps the most perfect book in the Valhalla trilogy. The author's summary of this book is that the treaty gets broken, or in his words "shit gets fucked up". Throughout its pages, this promise followed me.

Myriad threats to the future Earth's social order show up as obstacles to V team's success. Tensions arise between the characters themselves too. If Valhalla was meant to make you trust in the ravine's order, Ragnarok is what breaks that trust.

I'd say the middle kind of dragged for me, but the last few chapters deliver the most intense chain of events to happen in the whole story. In the end the promise was certainly kept.

I almost regret reading this book, because Ari Bach gave me one and a half books to really get into this universe, and then decided to rip my heart out from my body and stomp on it before shoving it into a furnace.

Like the biggest problem I had at one point was the fact that Violet, our protagonist, becomes this sex-crazed person, which at first just shatters any relatability, but then escalates beyond measure when she goes on to physically assault and attempt to rape Vibeke. This part makes me not only sad but angry. Because a protagonist who is assumedly 'good' being a rapist too is a bit dark for me to handle. There sometimes feels like there might be some coming back from this, but Bach establishes many times that it can't be undone. But now the part that *really* irks me is that Vibeke at one point, right after thinking about how wrong it is that Vi tried to rape her, immediately shifts to 'she held me down but that's what I wanted to do' and then proceeds to have sex with her, but this time assuming a dominant position herself. Like I feel like two characters were basically ruined for me.

Then of course there's the whole stuff with Alf and Veikko and whatever. That isn't the same kind of ruining, I feel. Alf has his ways, its been hinted at. Veikko maybe less, but despite the speed of it, his turn to a villain is played really well, supported with good backstory, and just really bloody awesome. Yes, it's still devastating to see him do those horrid things. But unlike with the Vi-Vibeke thing, I feel like Bach handled this so bloody well it's very hard to not like it.

Of course, the book isn't called Ragnarok for nothing. The world descends into utter chaos, any foundations laid in the reader's minds by the books so far are utterly destroyed, along with the structures within the world that the books have relied on. In the titular chapter we see Alf and Balder both killed permanently. This is followed by Veikko, the entire W team, Pluturus, and then Varg.
Varg, the shining beacon of Valknut, as it were. Couldn't have died a more honourable death, I feel. Like I've never liked him too much, primarily (okay, entirely) because of the sex obsession, but whatever traits I admired in him come to a full display here, and he more than anyone displays 'heroism' in the book's third act.

Now, by the time Varg dies its starting to look like there's very little one could do in terms of a sequel, which is why I started to become increasingly suspicious that Gudsriki will be a time-travel/alternate reality sort of deal. The final few pages, where Vi herself dies and talks about 'another life', have all but confirmed this thought in my head.

So, while I am disappointed with a huge part of the protagonist and a deuteragonist's story, and incredibly shocked by every event in the third act, I did still enjoy this book. It's a complex and perplexing sequel, and has made me way too eager to see how the final book brings the story to a (or rather, another?) close.