Rating: 
Summary: Full of detail, but lacking depth
Review: "War of the Gods" tells the story of Hadding, a viking warrior and king of the Danes. While the tale has all the battles, intrigue, romance and valour I expected, it's told in a stiff, formal way that I had a hard time getting into.To give Anderson credit, he seems to be trying to replicate the speech and tone of the sagas themselves, and he includes a wealth of historically-accurate detail about daily life in the viking era. But I found myself skimming big chunks of history and wordy speeches looking for the occasional, brilliant nuggets of suspenseful story-telling. I would have liked to see more depth in some of the characters; even Hadding himself doesn't really take on dimension until the last third of the book. The last 100 pages are better all around than the beginning, and there's a nice twist at the end. I picked it up because the book jacket suggested parallels to King Arthur - familiar elements of fosterage, leadership, sacrifice and betrayal give this story added dimension if you're interested in Arthurian stuff.
Rating:
Summary: Full of detail, but lacking depth
Review: "War of the Gods" tells the story of Hadding, a viking warrior and king of the Danes. While the tale has all the battles, intrigue, romance and valour I expected, it's told in a stiff, formal way that I had a hard time getting into. To give Anderson credit, he seems to be trying to replicate the speech and tone of the sagas themselves, and he includes a wealth of historically-accurate detail about daily life in the viking era. But I found myself skimming big chunks of history and wordy speeches looking for the occasional, brilliant nuggets of suspenseful story-telling. I would have liked to see more depth in some of the characters; even Hadding himself doesn't really take on dimension until the last third of the book. The last 100 pages are better all around than the beginning, and there's a nice twist at the end. I picked it up because the book jacket suggested parallels to King Arthur - familiar elements of fosterage, leadership, sacrifice and betrayal give this story added dimension if you're interested in Arthurian stuff.
Rating: 
Summary: Pseudo-historical/mythological fantasy
Review: Apparently, Poul Anderson is a prolific sci-fi and fantasy writer, and has been writing for a long time, too. I haven't read anything else of his, but based on this book, I am considering picking something else of his up. This wasn't one of the greatest books I've ever read, but it held my interest because of its use of Norse mythology and the supernatural. The narrative starts out relating the strife between Odin's Aesir and the Vanir, threatening to separate the gods forever, and perhaps have cataclysmic effects on the whole universe. It then focuses on Hadding for the rest of the book, who struggles to establish a stable kingdom, facing dangers both earthly and otherworldly. His role in bringing peace to the war between the gods may not be clear until the end, unless you're a lot more cunning than me. Following the interrelationships between the characters and geographies sometimes became a daunting task and confuses the narrative, but once I got past those things, the story became very engrossing. I'm not usually into fantasy, but I'm not sure this is entirely fantasy - its pseudo-historical/myth/fantasy/horror. The supernatural and pseudo-historic elements (some of which Anderson admits are inaccurate in a brief Afterword) don't really get in the way, though at times, as I said, the focus on detailed interrelationships and geographies can be a problem. The characterization is also a little weak; although there is some, I don't feel any of the characters were very fully developed, not even Hadding. There are flashes of some of the characters that reveal something profound about their personalities, but ultimately the narrative isn't very character-driven. Instead, the emphasis is more on describing action-packed battle scenes and the history of the characters and land. Still, as I said, the story became intriguing to me, and those few passages of characterization got me to care enough for the people that I wanted to know what happened to them. And eventually I did come to sympathize with Hadding as the text showed him as a leader of people, though something a bit more than human; fair and compassionate, yet stern and brazen; strong and courageous, yet rash and vulnerable. Also, fortunately, the action scenes weren't glorified or clichéd, but instead driven by metaphor and original description. For example, "Like two storm waves, a greater and a lesser, the hosts crashed together. Blood-foam spattered into the wind. The tides churned, swirled in among each other, became a seething that howled." The pages are filled with the typical fantasy fare: warriors, kings, princesses, sorcerers, witches, trolls, elves (though these are the scary kind), as well as some uncommon creatures such as jotuns (giants), drows, and land wights. And of course gods and goddesses. Recommended if you're into Norse mythology, or think you would enjoy a good, dark mythologically and pseudo-historically based fantasy.
Rating:
Summary: Pseudo-historical/mythological fantasy
Review: Apparently, Poul Anderson is a prolific sci-fi and fantasy writer, and has been writing for a long time, too. I haven't read anything else of his, but based on this book, I am considering picking something else of his up. This wasn't one of the greatest books I've ever read, but it held my interest because of its use of Norse mythology and the supernatural. The narrative starts out relating the strife between Odin's Aesir and the Vanir, threatening to separate the gods forever, and perhaps have cataclysmic effects on the whole universe. It then focuses on Hadding for the rest of the book, who struggles to establish a stable kingdom, facing dangers both earthly and otherworldly. His role in bringing peace to the war between the gods may not be clear until the end, unless you're a lot more cunning than me. Following the interrelationships between the characters and geographies sometimes became a daunting task and confuses the narrative, but once I got past those things, the story became very engrossing. I'm not usually into fantasy, but I'm not sure this is entirely fantasy - its pseudo-historical/myth/fantasy/horror. The supernatural and pseudo-historic elements (some of which Anderson admits are inaccurate in a brief Afterword) don't really get in the way, though at times, as I said, the focus on detailed interrelationships and geographies can be a problem. The characterization is also a little weak; although there is some, I don't feel any of the characters were very fully developed, not even Hadding. There are flashes of some of the characters that reveal something profound about their personalities, but ultimately the narrative isn't very character-driven. Instead, the emphasis is more on describing action-packed battle scenes and the history of the characters and land. Still, as I said, the story became intriguing to me, and those few passages of characterization got me to care enough for the people that I wanted to know what happened to them. And eventually I did come to sympathize with Hadding as the text showed him as a leader of people, though something a bit more than human; fair and compassionate, yet stern and brazen; strong and courageous, yet rash and vulnerable. Also, fortunately, the action scenes weren't glorified or clichéd, but instead driven by metaphor and original description. For example, "Like two storm waves, a greater and a lesser, the hosts crashed together. Blood-foam spattered into the wind. The tides churned, swirled in among each other, became a seething that howled." The pages are filled with the typical fantasy fare: warriors, kings, princesses, sorcerers, witches, trolls, elves (though these are the scary kind), as well as some uncommon creatures such as jotuns (giants), drows, and land wights. And of course gods and goddesses. Recommended if you're into Norse mythology, or think you would enjoy a good, dark mythologically and pseudo-historically based fantasy.
Rating: 
Summary: A complete waste of time
Review: I started reading Poul Anderson's "War of the Gods" expecting an epic and engrossing Viking adventure but quickly found myself very disappointed. The storyline moved at a snail's pace, the dialogue was uninspired and after about 200 pages I did not care whether Hadding lived or died. It is sad to see such an interesting story being handled in such a bland way. One can only wonder how this story would have turned out in the hands of more talented writers such as Morgan LLywellyn or Frank Herbert. Seven thumbs down (Im inbred)
Rating:
Summary: Recommended for those who like this sort of thing
Review: I'm a big fan of books that give realistic consideration to the world of ancient northern europe so I enjoyed the pace and style of this book. The archaic feel of the writing evokes a believable sense of those times but may be cumbersome for readers without special interests in these times and settings. Fans of this book and others like it should seek out Grundy's Rheingold; the Ring saga in novel form. Anderson's new book Mother of Kings is great, too.
Rating:
Summary: Recommended for those who like this sort of thing
Review: I'm a big fan of books that give realistic consideration to the world of ancient northern europe so I enjoyed the pace and style of this book. The archaic feel of the writing evokes a believable sense of those times but may be cumbersome for readers without special interests in these times and settings. Fans of this book and others like it should seek out Grundy's Rheingold; the Ring saga in novel form. Anderson's new book Mother of Kings is great, too.
Rating:
Summary: Depressing and overtold.
Review: The text begins interestingly enough, albeit somewhat ponderously, as Poul Anderson, one of the greats of Science Fiction & Fantasy, essays once more to travel the mist-shrouded roads of Faery. Writing at least since the fifties (I enjoyed his stuff going back to the sixties), Anderson's "voice" seems to have mellowed and subtly altered with the passing of the years. Never one of the most moving or most profound of tale spinners, he was always, nevertheless, the consummate storyteller. Still this present tale lacks the energy and vitality of his earlier saga-like excursions. While The Broken Sword leaped with life and blood and darkness and Hrolf Kraki's Saga (basically a translation of a legendary Danish-Norse tale, with some additions by the author to make it more contemporary) charged onward from episode to episode until crashing mightily on the rocks of it's own climactic shore, this new tale seems oddly stilted and self-conscious. The language does not pour forth, carrying the reader over the unsure ground of fantasy, as Anderson was wont to do in former days, and the characters he has given us here seem paler than in the past -- and not nearly as interesting as their predecessors were. The protagonist, Hadding the Dane-King, for instance, moves sluggishly from one odd episode to another, always winning his battles and defeating his foes, never seeming to be in any serious danger at all, a circumstance which ultimately seems to tell on him as much as it does on us. And the people around him, as well as his enemies, never seem to be quite worthy of the attention he lavishes on them. Fostered by giants of old Norse legend and lover to his own foster mother (or sister) who adopts human form to be with him, guided by a mysterious one-eyed "wanderer", Hadding ought to be more multi-faceted than the invincible, noble hero we are given. Through much of this tale only the relatively easy-read prose (despite the incorporation of archaic words and forms to set the mood) and the intrinsically promising subject-matter (for those of us who like the Norse thing) keeps you reading. Written stolidly and with far more description than one is likely to find in the real Icelandic and Norse stuff, the tale yet retains the sleepy, dream-like presentation of events and images which is so characteristic of this material in its original form -- a form in which giants are never quite giants as we understand them (for they seem larger or smaller depending on their surroundings) and gods walk about like magicians. Nevertheless, Anderson has here created a tale which, surprisingly and for all its apparent faults, does stand up -- and admirably so, in the end. It is a story of sadness and, finally, understanding -- sketched against a backdrop of adventure and fighting and killing. The last part of the book redeems the slowness and awkward-seeming "forced" prose that went before as the truth of the tale is relentlessly brought home -- how a single life may be more than its appearance alone and how the worlds of fantasy and reality may intersect afterall. It's just a story, Anderson says in his afterword and, indeed, it is that -- but a story which reached me in a largely unexpected way. It takes an historical legend from much earlier times and revives it in a manner which does honor to the source material from which it is drawn while yet placing it in a perspective we moderns can grasp. As The Broken Sword was, no doubt, a young man's breathless and headlong tale (Anderson himself once suggested this in a foreword he'd written somewhat later to that book), so this one is the work of another writer entirely -- one who has lived his life and seen the fullness of it and its inevitable denouement. This one goes deeper than it seemed at the first. And redeems itself, and all of us, for that. -- Stuart W. Mirsky
Rating: 
Summary: A dark novel
Review: This novel is a fictional account of the legendary Danish King Hadding and others, based on information from ancient sagas, themselves a combination of fact and fiction. It is difficult to set an exact time period for the story. Names like Frode were common in the Fourth century. In trying to make the tale sound like sagas, the author has used a writing style that is somewhat archaic and filled with words and terms not familiar to the average reader, particularly in the first part of the book. Also, Chapter 1 should have been a prologue. Periodically in the tale, people pause to give long poetic speeches. The latter part of the story steps back in time to set the scene with Hadding's daughter, and the timeline becomes somewhat tangled. Giants and gods drift in and out of the story at various points. The novel could have been aided by both a map (for readers unfamiliar with the area) and a glossary defining various words and terms.
Rating: 
Summary: Action Packed Sleeper
Review: While I admit there is a certain detachment in the characterization (similar to the Norse writings style it is based upon) the narrative is epic in scope. Elements of murderous intrique, sweeping action and historic realism, even with the magic, gods and trolls taking part in the story. This is not a cute fairy tale, even Tolkien could be considered white-washed next to WotG.
I have not read all of Poul's SF, I think his books, like any other writer's books, are not all masterpieces. The Broken Sword is my favorite-I have read it 3 times, The War of the Gods is second, I intend to re-read it. I liked the narrative, the legendary quality, the battle scenes. I totally recommend this book to those who prefer grand saga reflecting a less than perfect world.
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