Darkness Forged by Matt Larkin [SPFBO]

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The greatest crafts on Midgard come from the dvergar realm of Nidavellir. Volund, a gifted smith and once apprentice to the dvergar, escaped their dark realm to find solace in the arms of a valkyrie.

Nine years of respite.

And then she was gone.

Volund will do anything to get her back. But his reputation precedes him, and a cruel king knows the weapons Volund forges can win his wars. Imprisoned in the king’s forge, Volund’s only hope to escape is to find his wife. If he can’t, more than the forge’s darkness will overtake him.

Hiu’s review:

Darkness Forged is a novel adaption of the Norse poem Völundarkviða and parts of the Þiðreks saga. It features three brothers—Volund, Agilaz, and Slagfrid—who are married to three valkyries. Or rather, were married, as the wives disappear in the very first chapter, leaving only their rings (and a child) behind.

I’d classify this as a bit of a grimdark novel, though it’s hard to say how much of this grimness & darkness is down to Larkin’s additions and how much is down to the adapted poem. Especially since I’m not familiar with the source material. Admittedly, though, I got the impression that Larkin could have added more. Took more artistic license. When reading Darkness Forged, though it read very quickly and seemed well-written (in the sense that it painted a clear picture and I didn’t trip over any grammar), it felt… insubstantial. It felt like things were happening because these were what presumably had happened in the source material. I could have done with more context, more reasoning. Clearer motivations and lasting consequences.

In saying that, one character did have those things. Volund is the only point-of-view character to have a number of flashback chapters, and these chapters do provide context, and do lead to meaningful consequences down the road. As a result, Volund’s character felt significantly more fleshed-out to me when compared to his brothers. The youngest of the three, Volund is apprenticed as a smith to the dwarfs — here a cruel spirit-possessed race — and is forced to endure a number of horrors in order to be taught their craft. The following quote should sum it up:

After the beatings, you will be burned. Later lashed, raped, and drowned. If none of that breaks you, then, student, your real training begins.

I don’t know. Usually I’m the kind of reader who is violently opposed to books which feature the old Rape Makes You Stronger trope. Usually I find it a little offensive. But here it was stated too plainly to take seriously. It felt a little like the old jest, “beatings will continue until morale improves.” Whether this is true to the source material or an original invention, I don’t know. But there’s a fair bit of it through the novel, short as it is. Volund takes a different slave to bed every night when with the dwarfs, and there’s a rape that occurs near the end of the book. While I’m not going to lower my score for the inclusion of such scenes (which I feel would be unfair if the author is just working with they were given), I am going to lower it slightly for how the sexual scenes were written, which I found to feel awkwardly clinical, and a bit cheesy.

Volund wept again as he spent himself in her. He had felt many women climax beneath him. This was different.

While I did find Volund’s chapters compelling to some degree, I did find how the chapters were put together to feel a bit frustrating. Between Agilaz, Slagfrid, Volund’s past, and his present, we have four points of view to be cycled through. Which isn’t something I usually mind if I find them all compelling. But for me, neither Agilaz or Slagfrid’s chapters felt like they had much narrative impact. Not until the conclusion. And so the perspective shifts felt like they dragged out my reading experience by keeping me away from the parts I found engaging. If their chapters had been cut, if the novel had focused entirely on Volund, and the three brothers had only appeared together at the beginning and end… I don’t think I’d have felt the lack. Or maybe if the other brothers had been given the same focus as Volund, their stories would have meant more. In any case, this middle-ground didn’t work for me.

But what did work, I should say, is the ending. I spent a good portion of the book grumbling that Larkin had seemed to embrace a trope that I find dull and outplayed, only for it to be subverted wonderfully. That, I loved. There may have been a fist pump.

But it’s very rare that I can enjoy a book while feeling compelled by only one character. Unfortunately, this wasn’t one of those times. With so short a book, I need every page to matter. Here, there was just too much that didn’t engage me. Perhaps if certain things had been different. But then… it wouldn’t be the same book. And given that other judges have enjoyed Darkness Forged, perhaps it just wasn’t the book for me.

My final score is a 4/10.

Travis’ review:

This was an interesting adaptation of a part of Norse mythology I’d never heard of before. There was a lot of story packed into 226 pages, which read smoothly and never let up in the pacing. Which is to say, Darkness Forged is competently written and does an excellent job of retelling a relatively unknown tale from hundreds of years ago.

However, there was a lot that didn’t work for me. I’m going to preface the rest of this with the caveat that I know very little about Norse mythology (Thor is that guy from the Avengers, right?). If this book held true to original mythology and that’s your thing, then great.

Darkness Forged is very clearly Volund’s story. He’s the opening viewpoint, the only character to get flashbacks, and the title of the book is clearly based on his legendary ability to work a forge. And yet, we get two other major viewpoint characters in the form of Volund’s brothers. I enjoyed the multiple perspectives, but Volund’s brothers always felt like afterthoughts. The story is already very short, and I would have appreciated the opportunity to see more depth from the other characters. Failing that, this could have been Volund’s story entirely without losing much.

And now, at the risk of angering mythology purists everywhere, I have to ask: What is the value in strictly following dark stories that were told nearly a thousand years ago? To reiterate what Hiu said above, I have no way of knowing how much of Darkness Forged is the author’s invention and how much is existing lore. Either way, there’s a lot to this story that made me uncomfortable.

Content warnings for rape and nonconsensual sex to follow. There are also minor spoilers for the book, which I’m including where I feel they are needed to illustrate a point. Feel free to skip to the last paragraph if you’d prefer to avoid them.

Okay, that’s out of way.

Darkness Forged has a decent bit of sex in it, mostly implied and off screen. Very little of it is consensual. The book opens with jokes about the three brothers swapping wives. It’s a bit of off-color humor to offset the tragedy of said wives abandoning the brothers almost immediately afterwards. Which might have had more emotional impact if the marriages weren’t the result of Volund sexually assaulting his wife while she was injured and then forcing her to marry him. All at the tender age of 14.

In fairness to Volund, he’s had a shit life. When he was apprenticed to the dwarves to learn the art of forging, he was regularly raped as part of his training. Even the servant forced to take his virginity at the start of his training and his nightly visits with sex slaves don’t make up for that kind of harsh treatment. I suppose that’s also why Volund feels the need to rape someone else later in the story as a “necessary evil” to finding his lost wife.

All of this was… a lot. Maybe it was taken straight from the original poem, but the only historical context given to readers is in the afterword (which really could have benefited from being a foreword). My low tolerance for this material may not be shared by others, but it very much hurt my enjoyment of the story. Between the dismal sex-to-consent ratio and unequal time spent on each point of view, Darkness Forged was not for me.

My final score is a 3/10.

Taking both scores into account, The Fantasy Inn’s final SPFBO rating is 3.5/10.

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