Loki: Where Mischief Lies – Mackenzi Lee

Loki: Where Mischief Lies by Mackenzi Lee

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Mackenzi Lee tackles Loki’s story through the Marvel lens, blending Norse mythology and storylines with the unique versions of the characters that readers might be familiar with from the Marvel cinematic universe. We meet Loki and Thor as younger, more vulnerable characters for just a short while before the book skips through time and they’re starting to become the characters that we know (and love.) The story and characters felt incredibly familiar if you’re familiar with the MCU, so I think Lee did a fantastic job capturing that feel and tone.

I really enjoyed getting to know Loki when he was younger, full of vulnerabilities and unsure of why he was so different from his family. He always wanted his father to see him the way that he was Thor, as strong and worthy. Instead, Odin saw him as a threat and liability because of the magic that he could wield, as a result, Loki was never truly given the chance to learn about it or master control over it. The fear of magic would lead to more trouble than Asgard, Odin, and Loki could have imagined – which perhaps could have been avoided had they embraced what made Loki unique and allowed him to learn from it. Even though this book dealt with the acceptance of Loki’s magic, I feel that the struggles he went through accepting himself, his magic, and his place would resonate with anything (even if they don’t have magic.) Most importantly, I felt that the LGBTQ representation was fantastic (and it’s Lee, we can’t expect anything else) and normalized people’s feelings rather than saying “this is special” she said “this is normal and no one has to remark upon it because it’s okay and a bunch of other people feel this way too”.

Although Loki didn’t mean to mess everything up, he inevitably does each time he is given responsibilities – so his father decides to send him on a mission to Midgard. The book blends fantasy with historical fiction, as Loki finds himself in a world completely unlike the one that he has always known. I found his reactions to his new situation to be incredibly humorous and reminiscent of the style of banter and quips that we’ve come to expect from MCU-Loki. Loki was assuredly the best written character in this story, from his fantastic back and forths with his brother Thor to his heartbreaking scenes with his father. Some of his supporting characters were enjoyable enough, but none were super memorable and had they been more appealing, then I would have given this book a higher rating.

The plot was really interesting, as you see how prophecies and assumptions come into play (and sometimes mean very different things than you expect. Not everything is straight forward. There are lies and betrayals. Lessons learned, And although the pacing ebbed and flowed, sometimes captivating you with every line and other times plodding along – overall, I thought this was a fantastic book and cannot wait to see where Lee takes us next in the Marvel universe.

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