The Gods of Laki: A Thriller by Chris Angus : Review

A race to unveil the secret of Laki, a volcano on the southern shores of Iceland, pits our heroes—a sixteen-year-old Viking girl from the tenth century, a German geologist from World War II, and a former Secret Service agent protecting a female volcanologist—against evil forces with a plan to cause an eruption using explosives, altering the global climate through the release and forcing the price of oil to skyrocket.

Everyone and everything on Laki is in danger, including the possibility of ever unraveling the mysteries of the place, as it faces burial beneath a carpet of lava flows. Caught underground by the fracturing physical breakup of Laki, everyone finds themselves ensnared by Laki itself—an unseen, implacable foe that seems everything but a benign presence. Every move they make appears to be guided and controlled by an intelligence that permeates the netherworld.

Only gradually, through all the conflict between the various factions, does everyone begin to realize that it is Laki itself that has always been in charge.

 The Gods of Laki: A Thriller by Chris Angus is definitely not the type of book I would normally pick up and read, as I don’t branch outside of science fiction or fantasy all that much these days. Chris Angus has managed to write a book that touches on just about every genre there is and yet still manages to stand out in a genre all its own, I’m still a little surprised at how much I enjoyed reading it.  This was another book that I was unable to put down once I picked it up and started reading, it cut into my precious sleep two nights in a row when I had to work early the next day.

There really isn’t much I can say about the plot that I can say without spoiling anything but I will try my hardest to do so. The Gods of Laki is told mainly from three different view points, each in a different point in time. In 940 AD a group of vikings fleeing from their homeland find refuge in the land of ice and fire, and quickly find out that their new home is not as safe as it seems. In 1940 Fritz Kraus is the only German student at the University of Iceland and he soon finds himself involved in events that may change the world forever.

Lastly, in the present day former Secret Service agent Ryan Baldwin has been asked to protect the volcanologist daughter of a high ranking government official while she studies a volcano in Iceland.

Chris Angus manages to take all three of these story lines and weave them into one amazing story that I think any reader will find themselves unable to put down. I can honestly say I was glad to lose the sleep I did to read this story, and I’m already keeping an eye out for more great stories by Angus. I don’t know many authors who can take Vikings, Nazis, an almost sentient volcano and tie them all together so well.

I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.