“Thundercluck” is a fiction novel written by Paul Tillery IV and illustrated by Meg Wittwer. It is set in the realms described in Norse mythology, primarily Asgard, Midgard and Muspellheim, with some of the other realms mildly explored throughout the plot.
The plot is what made this book a swift favorite of mine. It opens with a battle between the lightning god Thor and Asgard’s palace cook Gorman Bones. Bones wants to cook Thor’s prize chicken Hennda, and Thor is having nothing of it. Thus, their battle ensues. It ends after a powerful bolt of lightning from Thor splits in two.
One bolt hits Bones, killing him, and the other hits Hennda. Shortly after Hennda is hit, she lays an egg that immediately hatches. The chick that comes from it sparks with lightning, and a child valkyrie named Brunhilde names him Thundercluck.
This is my favorite opening to any story I have read as it puts the reader immediately into high stakes action that introduces how the main character came to be.
The rest of the book follows Thundercluck’s journey to defeating the resurrected Under-Cook Gorman Bones. From hiding in Midgard, more commonly known as Earth, to defeating an overgrown spider in the basement of a library, to traveling the different realms to regaining his courage at the world tree named Yggdrasil, to the epic final battle with the Under-Cook that has the best twist in a fight I have ever seen. This book is a wild ride up and down.
It also ends on an actually good cliffhanger that directly leads into the second book “Thundercluck: Recipe for Revenge.”
“Thundercluck” really has it all: humor, mythological accuracy, action, twists and a great story that has me hooked any time I reread the book. It gets 100 percent of the possible naturality of the chickenness of Thundercluck, and its prize is another reread of the duology.
