“This, as far as I can tell, is the Prime Edda — a completely unknown work of Snorri Sturluson’s. What’s more, this manuscript apparently belonged at one time to Franz Liszt, who worked on the translation before giving it to a young companion of his whom he referred to as ‘Dearest Friend’.
..."Wagner," breathed Galen. "It's Wagner." [loc. 875]
Alexandra David-Neel! Trepanning! Wagner and Liszt! A lost Edda! Absinthe! A magician going by the stage name of 'Obscuro', whose name is actually Jude!
All so promising. But also: very few female characters, none of them with any significance to the plot; not much in the way of characterisation (our three protagonists are all white male academics); a sprawling, convoluted and sometimes repetitive plot full of conspiracies and ancient wisdom; some clunky writing... Despite being published in 2002, I suspect this was written a lot earlier ('Yugoslavian Airlines'?). And despite my acquiring it in 2012 (!) it's taken me a decade to get around to reading it. (Or so I thought: see below.) Luckily I wasn't hooked -- 'luckily' because the rest of the series seems to be currently unavailable, and has possibly never been published in English.
Come for the Norse myth, stay for the trepanned zombie students roaming the streets of Vienna, but don't expect resolution.
...Oh, for heaven's sake: turns out this was another accidental reread. My original review from 2012/13.
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