As part of the celebration of this fantastic book, I am pleased to share a guest blog from the author and illustrator, Thiago De Moraes! My review will follow shortly!
Dangerous Fun
My new book Old Gods, New Tricks, tells the story of Trixie, a young girl who journeys through many afterlives of myth in a quest to save the world from a horrible fate. Travelling alongside her are her friends: a bunch of untrustworthy and chaotic trickster gods.
In Trixie’s first adventure she ended up at the top of the world tree from ancient Norse mythology, Yggdrasill. This time she travels through a sequence of terrifying underworlds, narrowly escaping deadly traps, ravenous monsters and devious gods. It should make for a really scary story, but most of the book is quite funny (or, at least it’s trying to be).
That’s not an unusual dynamic. Danger and humour are not opposites, in fact, they often travel hand in hand. The exhilaration we feel reading a scary novel or watching a horror film is not too dissimilar from the one we get from laughing at a raucous comedian’s jokes. More than that, a sense of humour is usually the best way to keep calm when we’re under pressure. If you can crack a joke when a giant three-headed dog is trying to eat you, then you probably have the wits and the coolness to escape said giant three-headed dog.
When telling the story of Trixie’s adventures (or misadventures, depending on how you look at them) I often imagined she and her trickster friends would react in the exact opposite way from how I would in any situation of peril. I’d quite like to be able to say that I’m a dashing, devil-may-care sort of chap, but I check the weather forecast three times before leaving the house and always wait for the little green man to appear before crossing the road.
Trixie and her band of misfits, on the other hand, find almost any situation funny, however deadly it might be. Attacked by huge guardian lions? Funny. Stuck behind a river of blood? Funny. Trapped under a ziggurat of doom? Funny.
As they go through all manner of horrors and perils with a smile on their faces, I hope that so will the reader. Being able to laugh at something doesn’t mean we can’t see its importance, and reading of a character quipping their way through Hel doesn’t mean we won’t worry about what might happen to them. It just means we can go through it all with a smile on our faces, however clenched our fists might be.
Taking Trixie through worlds full of perilous myths and monsters was great fun. I hope readers have lots of laughs (and a few scares) following that journey too.
My Shelves Are Full 