Cosmic Roots and Eldritch Shores, March 2026
“Riddles and Ragnarok” by E. Florian Gludovacz
Reviewed by Geoff Houghton
CRES’ first new story for several months is a fantasy entitled “Riddles and Ragnarok.” It is set in the business quarter of a contemporary city. The ongoing struggle of Odin and his son, Thor, against the trickster, Loki, is brought forward into the 21st Century.
An Icelandic Bard might be puzzled at some of the details, such as Odin recognising Loki’s prized Gjallerhorn, the horn that will sound the start of the final battle, Ragnarok, as a 3-d printed facsimile. However, I believe that he would approve the riddle contest that is the core and heart of this story. The different characters of Odin, Thor, and Loki are well-defined and true to Skaldic tradition and those differences (slow, deep wisdom, swift and decisive achievement and carefully planned trickiness) are key to the winning and losing of the contest between the parties.
In order to draw maximum benefit from this story it is necessary to have at least a working knowledge of the original stories of the Norse gods and the Norse view that nothing lasts forever, that all existence is a hopeless rear-guard action against what we now know as entropy. Even then, the reader may consider that the multiple substitutions of characters in the first and third contests (skill and strength) requires too much arcane knowledge of lesser Nordic gods and demi-urges. However, the contest of mind is a longer and possibly even more interesting version of the riddle contest between Bilbo Baggins and Gollum at their first meeting and has an equally clever ending.
Geoff Houghton lives in a leafy village in rural England. He is a retired Healthcare Professional with a love of SF and a jackdaw-like appetite for titbits of medical, scientific and historical knowledge.