Magnus Chase and the Ship of the Dead Book Review 2025/10/19

I finally finished reading this book!

So I’m just gonna say my feelings for this book.

Firstly, I don’t understand what value the Mead of Kvasir actually did. Magnus didn’t get a sudden boost of poeticness that he used to defeat Loki in flyting. I feel like they went through way too much trouble for mead that didn’t really do much. All the gods complimented him for getting the mead, but at what cost?

Secondly, this is related to the 1st problem that I have. At the near end of the book, it says that Odin has an emergency supply of Kvasir’s Mead. If he did, why didn’t he defeat Loki by himself or give it to Magnus? They wouldn’t have needed to risk their lives over and over just to procure something that Odin already had. There was no need for the poor murdered souls and got killed by Magnus’s crew.

Thirdly, the Othala Rune.

The only thing that the Othala Rune led to was Hearthstone’s dragon father getting murdered by Jack and Magnus. In the end, it was used for invisibility to get near to the Ship of the Dead, but it wore off halfway. There surely was another way to approach the ship. 

Fourthly, the Dragon’s heart.

So Jack stabbed Mr. Alderman and worked with Hearthstone to cook the heart and eat it, to supposedly get ‘wisdom and knowledge’ from Mr. Alderman. I’m not sure if there was a single bit of wisdom in that man (dragon)’s body. Then Magnus accidentally touched the heart’s blood and sucked on his finger, therefore digesting that menace's blood. Magnus must be more idiotic than I realized. Anyone with common sense would realize to just wash his hands in water or just wipe it on their clothes. But no. He just had to put it in his mouth.

Lastly, the 2 giants that were murdered by like 9 people including a magic sword.

So Baugi and Suttung are introduced fast, strong and menacing. Suttung gets killed by one magic sword. Or actually he killed himself. He ended up losing control of his axe, and the axe killed him. Dumb. And another giant just got killed by an insane person with an axe that got mad because his hometown was insulted. I swear, giants would be the strongest creatures in the 9 worlds if they had common sense.

This book gets a 6/10.

I enjoyed it, but some parts are ridiculously annoying to read. I could take on the entire 9 worlds if I was a powerful giant like them.