Loki: A Bad God's Guide to Taking the Blame

Name: Loki: A Bad God's Guide to Taking the Blame
Author: Louie Stowell

by Louie Stowell

Ages 8–11 Reading age 8 Novel Set in school funnysilly

Loki is still stuck as a schoolboy, still keeping the diary, and now being blamed for something he genuinely did not do.

A story about magical creatures and children, funny and silly in tone. We would put it with children of 8–11, and at a reading age of about 8 for reading alone.

Nothing flagged

We have not flagged any content in this one that a parent would usually want warning about.

Part of a series

This is book 2 of the Loki: A Bad God's Guide series, so there is more to read if it goes down well — which is worth a great deal with a reluctant reader.

Our take on this book

Loki, the Norse god of mischief, has been sentenced by Odin to live on Earth as an ordinary, badly-behaved eleven-year-old boy, and must prove he can be good — recorded in a magical diary that scores his virtue and calls out his lies — or face eternity somewhere far worse. Louie Stowell's series is a joy: the diary format is packed with doodles, rude asides and Loki's magnificently unrepentant voice, and the comedy comes from a literal god of chaos trying, and mostly failing, to pass as a nice schoolboy. It is heavily illustrated and irresistibly funny, in the Wimpy Kid and Bad Guys tradition, with nothing to trouble a reader. For an eight- to eleven-year-old, and especially a reluctant one, Loki is a brilliant hook — the mischief, the pictures and the running joke of a divine trickster stuck in detention make it fly by, and children reliably demand the sequels.