We love great illustrated fiction here at Toppsta, so we are very excited about Louie Stowell's new book Loki: A Bad God's Guide to Being Good - our Featured Illustrated Book for February.

Written as hilarious diary entries, packed with doodles and comic strips, the book is told in the voice of Loki - the wily Norse god who finds himself trapped in the body of an eleven-year-old boy

Odin has banished Loki to live on Earth as a schoolboy, as a punishment for the tricks he has played on the other gods, keeping a diary to record his behaviour during his month as a mortal.

We loved rebellious Loki and the fabulous, cartoon illustrations in this book, which is recommended for readers 9+.

Read on to hear about author Louie Stowell's inspiration for the book and why she loved writing about Loki in her guest blog. You can also read a free extract of the book here.

My Life with Loki - louie stowell

I first met Loki in the early 1980s when I was very young, and he was going by the name of Loge. I can’t tell you when, exactly, because time-sense and toddlers do not mix. But I was watching television when something astounding happened. Giants walked onto the screen. I was transfixed. The giants, in this case, were singing. In German. But that didn’t matter, because … look! Giants! 

Years later I realised they were probably people on stilts, and that it was a production of Wagner’s Ring cycle. Loki (he goes by many names) will be annoyed to discover that I barely noticed him when I met him. Loge, as he’s called in the opera, didn’t register. It was all about the giants and the Valkyries.

I next met Loki in an Usborne book of Norse myths, a few years later. Again, I’m afraid he paled in comparison to Thor and his goat-pulled chariot, or the detailed diagram of the world tree that frames the Norse universe.

So far, Loki was only at the edges of my awareness. (He’s fuming as I type this.)

I studied Old English at university and that brought me closer to a world of dragons and heroes and gods. Close, but not quite to Loki’s door. 

It wasn’t until I was in my 30s that I discovered the true joy of Loki. I was researching a book on Norse mythology for my job at Usborne Publishing and dived into the recorded myths. I read the various Edda and a bunch of sagas. Then I knew, Loki was MY Norse god. I was co-writing with a colleague, and he took all the Thor stories while I did the Loki ones. The more I learned about his tricky ways, the more I was compelled. I love stories of outsiders and oddballs. People who don’t quite fit. (Yes, Loki, you ARE an oddball, you cannot deny it.) Loki is always at the edges of the myths, causing trouble or (occasionally) helping out. He’s definitely not a hero; he’s more like the grit in the oyster that starts the pearl forming.

I don’t have a favourite Loki story, except ALL OF THEM. From the story where he turns into a horse and gives birth to an eight-legged foal and the time he got his mouth sewn up, to the story that’s just him hurling insults at all the gods. My book isn’t a retelling of any of these myths, as it’s set after most of them happened. They’re all in my Loki’s past, except a few that have only been prophesied (spoilers for the end of the word, Ragnarok). But I do bring back echoes of some of the other myths … or consequences that follow from them. Loki’s life is the pure embodiment of, “My, my, my, if it isn’t the consequences of my own actions catching up with me.” He is sometimes she, sometimes an animal, sometimes good, sometimes bad. Always complicated. (And, he would like me to add, handsome.)

Writing the first draft of Loki: A Bad God’s Guide to Being Good was oddly easy. Perhaps because I’d lived with Loki for so long. Or because, perhaps, he’s real and speaking through me. That’s what it implies on the cover of the book, at least. 

I won’t pretend he sprang from my mind fully formed and perfectly handsome; a LOT of editing was involved. And drawing. But the voice was there from the beginning, because Loki’s stories grew up alongside me, like a very naughty wolf shadowing my movements. 

Telling Loki’s story in both words and pictures felt natural. I’ve kept a diary all my life, and a lot of it is taken up with doodles. I think through pictures, as anyone I went to school with or have worked with can probably tell you. I’ve always loved comics, though I was more of a DC person than a Marvel one, so Loki comics came to me very late in life! So I was drawn to telling the story using a mix of doodles and text and comics. Loki is a god of scraps and bits and shadows, so a mix and match way of telling the story felt right. Plus, do you have any idea how long drawing an entire graphic novel takes? Loki’s way too impatient for that. 

I hope you enjoy my Loki. And he hopes you do too. Wait, no, he’s saying something… He’s scowling at me, saying, OF COURSE THEY WILL LOVE ME FOR I AM AMAZING AND HANDSOME. Perhaps time to stop writing this blog post and pay him some attention, or I might find something nasty under my pillow later. 

more books by Louie Stowell