Book Review: Take My Monsters

Title: Take My Monsters 

Author: C.Gockel

Date: 2021

Publisher: cgockelwrites.com

ISBN: 9798771340203

Length: 58 pages

Quote: "Part of Margusa wants the monster to destroy her. She wants to die. In Hades the mark on her forehead will disappear and she’ll be a free woman." 

This novelette, or short story available as a separate book, is another of C. Gockel's riffs on old folktales. This one is a mash-up of the image of "The Greek Slave," the Scots ballad of "Tam Lin," and the various remnants of Norse mythology available to us. "Tam Lin" appeals because it's an early "strong heroine" story; in Take My Monsters the Greek slave escapes, and becomes the tough and loyal lover who breaks the enchantment that turns Tam Lin into a series of monsters, with the help of the Aesir. 

How this happens is the content of the story, so why spoil it here. Let's just say, instead, that the story is a sort of trailer for a series of longer novels using the Norse ancestor-gods as characters. The deification of the legendary ancestors, Aesir and Vannir, added a peculiar twist to Norse theology--some point to the tribal name "Aesir" as evidence of Asian influence--an acceptance of the mixed nature of things, an acknowledgment that evil things can lead to good things and good things to evil things. Loki, the mischievous but beloved younger son who was regretfully banished from the tribe after one stupid prank too many, was interpreted by the Romans as a counterpart to Prometheus, by the Christians as a prototype to Satan--those interpretations seem to have added to the stories about Loki. As a rebellious youth C.S. Lewis attempted, though he did not attempt to publish, an epic tale with Loki as a hero. C. Gockel has written such a tale and, lacking the constraint of putting it in the form of epic poetry, has had it published as a series of fantasy novels. It's hard to make Loki a tragic hero but possible, for Gockel at least, to make him a romantic one.

But Loki is not featured in Take My Monsters. All this prequel needs to contribute to the Loki novels (I Bring the Fire et seq.) is the image of Margusa, whose name reverts to the normal form Margarites when she ceases to be a slave, and Tam Lin as a mortal couple who freely pledge themselves to the service of the Aesir. 

Its message, as an independent story, couldn't be much more obvious: Women can still hope to be rescued. Sometimes that happens. We can find male allies, anyway. Meanwhile, we need to know when to slay our own monsters and when to take them in hand, tame them, and make friends of them. In these 58 pages Margarites manages to do both.