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Sirènes & Vikings #1-2
The Waters of Skagerrak
Fierce Vikings and mystical Sirens face each other in a never-ending battle to claim the most significant natural resource their world has to the sea itself.
For generations, Viking clans have faced Siren tribes in battles waged on land and sea—battles that pit brute strength against sorcery and cunning versus charm. Their war has torn apart the very world they fight over while filling graveyards that span farther than the eye can see.
These are the tales of their mythical encounters. These are the tales of the Sirens of the Norse Sea .
For generations, Viking clans have faced Siren tribes in battles waged on land and sea—battles that pit brute strength against sorcery and cunning versus charm. Their war has torn apart the very world they fight over while filling graveyards that span farther than the eye can see.
These are the tales of their mythical encounters. These are the tales of the Sirens of the Norse Sea .
112 pages, Paperback
First published September 9, 2020
21 people are currently reading
131 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 41 reviews
January 3, 2026
1.8 🌟
August 3, 2021
It's nice to read some EuroComics now and again as a change of pace but I never did find myself getting too into this one.
Disney this Ain't
Disney this Ain't
May 21, 2021
The boy is weak, but he has a mind for strategy and is fucking a half-troll. Will he find a way to defeat the sirens, or make peace with them? Will he fuck them as well, to earn their trust, and that weep as the women he's slept with all dislike him? Maybe! At least the giant sea monster looks rad.
July 15, 2023
I was about to quit without even finishing issue 1, but I continued. Second story is somewhat better. All in all, it looks like a European rip-off of Michael Turner's Fathom vol 1: Blue Sun, especially when it comes to art, but adds Vikings.
November 21, 2022
It's Vikings vs sirens merged with Romeo & Juliet and a Half-troll disrupter. There's some intriguing art and nice moments, but for the most part the story is very straightforward. Some of the names make it hard to keep track of the different characters (most of the sirens look very similar), but overall it's an interesting if not particularly memorable conceit and story.
April 7, 2022
This graphic novel features two stories about the tensions between sirens of the sea and Vikings of the land.
In the first story, the scourge of the abyss - the chief's son falls in love with a siren, the only problem, his current lover is a half-troll warrior and none to pleased her man now loves another....
In the two worlds of Freydis, we meet a shape-shifting raised by humans due to a prophesy that because of a nacre streak in her hair she will destroy her clan. Bitter at both sides this warrior woman clearly has issues.
We also get a character files at the back of the king and Queen and their 9 daughters, each a vastly different siren with their own powers, which is really neat.
I've not encountered much on sirens in Norse myth, so this is a wonderful addition.
In the first story, the scourge of the abyss - the chief's son falls in love with a siren, the only problem, his current lover is a half-troll warrior and none to pleased her man now loves another....
In the two worlds of Freydis, we meet a shape-shifting raised by humans due to a prophesy that because of a nacre streak in her hair she will destroy her clan. Bitter at both sides this warrior woman clearly has issues.
We also get a character files at the back of the king and Queen and their 9 daughters, each a vastly different siren with their own powers, which is really neat.
I've not encountered much on sirens in Norse myth, so this is a wonderful addition.
July 24, 2022
This series follows different kind of sirens (mermaids) and their interactions with Vikings. Book 1 follows the heirs of a Viking leader and a siren leader. The Viking is in a relationship with half orc and seems to like powerful and monstrous women. This leads to ... complications.
The artwork in this is beautiful and the worldbuilding lore is also really interesting. Each book follows a different kind of siren and their interactions with different kinds of vikings.
While I liked this, I dont think everyone would. There are some women competing for the same man kinda vibes
The artwork in this is beautiful and the worldbuilding lore is also really interesting. Each book follows a different kind of siren and their interactions with different kinds of vikings.
While I liked this, I dont think everyone would. There are some women competing for the same man kinda vibes
April 9, 2023
2 1/2 stars rounded up.
I liked the art a lot, but the story didn't do it for me. Borglinde deserved BETTER. Wish there were more powerful women in the story without it being revolved around the terrible men :')
I liked the art a lot, but the story didn't do it for me. Borglinde deserved BETTER. Wish there were more powerful women in the story without it being revolved around the terrible men :')
did-not-finish
September 5, 2022Gave up 44 pages in. I don’t like the cheating plotline.
May 19, 2022
Pretty art. But lots of women paying for the choices of men who get away with it.
December 13, 2022
Spectacular art undercut by a so-so script. I don’t know if the weakness is in the translation or in the original, but the writing doesn’t bring out the strengths of the Romeo & Juliet-style plot.
July 6, 2021
Composed of a pair of awkward, unrelated, dark tales of the ancient Norse and the creatures of the icy sea, SIRENS OF THE NORSE SEA isn't a particularly dynamic or engaging read but certainly not for lack of effort. Whatever the reason for the creative team's impetus to tell two independent, complete stories that always and unnecessarily hint at more, the final product is a narratively immature but structurally progressive attempt at generational storytelling.
The first story carries more dramatic colors and better (more believable) character dramatics as it tracks the accidental betrayals of a young man who hungers for peace between his village and the sirens of the nearby North Sea. The story quickly builds and its energy rightly expands as young Sveld gets in over his head but refuses to give up. His men are dying in an age-old conflict. Can he put an end to it? And closer to the heart, can he resolve the flailing loyalties of the half-troll warrior woman with whom he shares his bed? Sveld's single-minded ambitions blind him to his own sins, and so curtain his ability to discern the light from the dark when circumstances turn sour.
With such complex and interwoven, human missteps native to small villages on the brink, resolution is often difficult to conjure on a whim. Regrettably for readers, the creative team manifested a fairly easy solution: kill off any character inconvenient to the narrative. Perhaps this is an oversimplification, but the truth is that readers have scarcely acclimated to the culture of the sirens, scarcely grown to trust the will of the village chief and his foolhardy son, and scarcely tendered their suspicion of the clever half-troll's self-hatred before a raucous sea battle brings the story to an end. The tale, to a severe point, is grossly unfulfilling.
The second story packed into SIRENS OF THE NORSE SEA settles into the haughty and ugly terrain of a vengeance so involved and a self-hatred so thorough it puckers the character development a little too deliberately. Here, a siren girl named Freydis seeks violence against all she encounters: the filthy humans who manage the land with poor governance and ineffective regional relations, and the unsympathetic sea cretins from whom she descended who would sacrifice their own to appease an ancient and half-forgotten myth.
Freydis, growing a mermaid's tail in the sea but human legs when brought on land, is somehow part of the universe of the graphic novel and yet apart from it. The young woman's bravado is credible, but is somehow entirely misplaced considering this constitutes all she is: the best fighter, the most ardent negotiator, and the most virulent explorer-character in the whole story. In other words, a competent lead character is great and all, but when she's merely a "strong female protagonist" for the sake of proving that strong female protagonists exist, then she's effectively useless. Freydis is distrusted as an ambitious woman (on land) and abandoned as a creature of fate (in the sea). She's one fragile archetype pissing against a landscape of other fragile archetypes.
SIRENS OF THE NORSE SEA reads as one might presume a themed anthology would: a handful of tales from another world whose resolutions may or may not prove valid, but their lessons ring true nonetheless. The book's different writers and different artists, for each of the two stories, reinforces this disunity. There are highlights and points of intrigue to both, but neither of which are enough to surmount each tale's narrative deficiencies.
The artist for the first story, Phil Briones, introduces dramatic colors and kinetic action to reel in readers (e.g., sea battles are exquisite and treacherous), even if the story itself carries more plot holes than is preferable (e.g., yanking free a barbed spear from the front). Meanwhile, the artist for the second story, Marco Dominici, renders his work way too close to the uncanny valley to be worth rereading. The lettering for both could be better (the kerning, specifically, is atrocious).
Elsewhere, the writing, or in the least, the translation work, carries a number of linguistic anachronisms or common lexicographical follies. For example, characters yell "Run!" while on a boat in the middle of the sea, one character uses the word "parley" about six centuries too early, a merwoman uses the idiom "take a step back," and halfway through the second tale, readers encounter an info dump that wreaks havoc on the story and throws everything into chaos. However coherent SIRENS OF THE NORSE SEA professes to be, it is thoroughly and unequivocally imperfect.
The first story carries more dramatic colors and better (more believable) character dramatics as it tracks the accidental betrayals of a young man who hungers for peace between his village and the sirens of the nearby North Sea. The story quickly builds and its energy rightly expands as young Sveld gets in over his head but refuses to give up. His men are dying in an age-old conflict. Can he put an end to it? And closer to the heart, can he resolve the flailing loyalties of the half-troll warrior woman with whom he shares his bed? Sveld's single-minded ambitions blind him to his own sins, and so curtain his ability to discern the light from the dark when circumstances turn sour.
With such complex and interwoven, human missteps native to small villages on the brink, resolution is often difficult to conjure on a whim. Regrettably for readers, the creative team manifested a fairly easy solution: kill off any character inconvenient to the narrative. Perhaps this is an oversimplification, but the truth is that readers have scarcely acclimated to the culture of the sirens, scarcely grown to trust the will of the village chief and his foolhardy son, and scarcely tendered their suspicion of the clever half-troll's self-hatred before a raucous sea battle brings the story to an end. The tale, to a severe point, is grossly unfulfilling.
The second story packed into SIRENS OF THE NORSE SEA settles into the haughty and ugly terrain of a vengeance so involved and a self-hatred so thorough it puckers the character development a little too deliberately. Here, a siren girl named Freydis seeks violence against all she encounters: the filthy humans who manage the land with poor governance and ineffective regional relations, and the unsympathetic sea cretins from whom she descended who would sacrifice their own to appease an ancient and half-forgotten myth.
Freydis, growing a mermaid's tail in the sea but human legs when brought on land, is somehow part of the universe of the graphic novel and yet apart from it. The young woman's bravado is credible, but is somehow entirely misplaced considering this constitutes all she is: the best fighter, the most ardent negotiator, and the most virulent explorer-character in the whole story. In other words, a competent lead character is great and all, but when she's merely a "strong female protagonist" for the sake of proving that strong female protagonists exist, then she's effectively useless. Freydis is distrusted as an ambitious woman (on land) and abandoned as a creature of fate (in the sea). She's one fragile archetype pissing against a landscape of other fragile archetypes.
SIRENS OF THE NORSE SEA reads as one might presume a themed anthology would: a handful of tales from another world whose resolutions may or may not prove valid, but their lessons ring true nonetheless. The book's different writers and different artists, for each of the two stories, reinforces this disunity. There are highlights and points of intrigue to both, but neither of which are enough to surmount each tale's narrative deficiencies.
The artist for the first story, Phil Briones, introduces dramatic colors and kinetic action to reel in readers (e.g., sea battles are exquisite and treacherous), even if the story itself carries more plot holes than is preferable (e.g., yanking free a barbed spear from the front). Meanwhile, the artist for the second story, Marco Dominici, renders his work way too close to the uncanny valley to be worth rereading. The lettering for both could be better (the kerning, specifically, is atrocious).
Elsewhere, the writing, or in the least, the translation work, carries a number of linguistic anachronisms or common lexicographical follies. For example, characters yell "Run!" while on a boat in the middle of the sea, one character uses the word "parley" about six centuries too early, a merwoman uses the idiom "take a step back," and halfway through the second tale, readers encounter an info dump that wreaks havoc on the story and throws everything into chaos. However coherent SIRENS OF THE NORSE SEA professes to be, it is thoroughly and unequivocally imperfect.
April 18, 2021
Quelle belle découverte !
Je suis tombée sur cette bande dessinée par hasard et autant vous dire que je ne regrette pas. Je suis sous le charme de l'histoire et de l'art. Les dessins sont superbes, très en phase avec l'ambience crée par les auteur.es (scénario et dessin). J'ai adoré découvrir l'histoire d'Ingvald et de son amie Borglinde mi-troll mi-humaine et de leurs ennemis, le peuple des sirènes avec Arnhild. Meme si parfois on rencontre quelques clichés dans l'histoire (trahison, haine), j'adore le fait que nous côtoyons plusieurs créatures mystiques.
Le lecteur y trouve son bonheur peu importe votre préférence : politique entre tribus et territoires, romance, histoire des peuples (léger mais nous avons quelques indices),...
Un début très prometteur ! J'ai hate de lire la suite !
Je suis tombée sur cette bande dessinée par hasard et autant vous dire que je ne regrette pas. Je suis sous le charme de l'histoire et de l'art. Les dessins sont superbes, très en phase avec l'ambience crée par les auteur.es (scénario et dessin). J'ai adoré découvrir l'histoire d'Ingvald et de son amie Borglinde mi-troll mi-humaine et de leurs ennemis, le peuple des sirènes avec Arnhild. Meme si parfois on rencontre quelques clichés dans l'histoire (trahison, haine), j'adore le fait que nous côtoyons plusieurs créatures mystiques.
Le lecteur y trouve son bonheur peu importe votre préférence : politique entre tribus et territoires, romance, histoire des peuples (léger mais nous avons quelques indices),...
Un début très prometteur ! J'ai hate de lire la suite !
July 26, 2022
Currently available on Kindle Unlimited, this is the first episode of a series although it is a self-contained story.
The writing is very good. The plot is built on themes that resonate through legends and quality fantasy writing, such as loyalty, jealousy, belonging, revenge, and statecraft. The art is also very nice: detailed, dynamic, and clear.
All the characters have a slightly standardised movie feel, with the Vikings, Sirens, Trolls, and half-Troll looking and behaving just as they would in a blockbuster film or TV series. No surprise there. The writer and illustrator are both French but the writer is an animation scriptwriter and the illustrator has had an extensive career with Disney, Marvel, and DC. This provides the American style within a Franco-Belgian format.
Overall, it’s a success and I’ll gladly reread as well as follow the series.
The writing is very good. The plot is built on themes that resonate through legends and quality fantasy writing, such as loyalty, jealousy, belonging, revenge, and statecraft. The art is also very nice: detailed, dynamic, and clear.
All the characters have a slightly standardised movie feel, with the Vikings, Sirens, Trolls, and half-Troll looking and behaving just as they would in a blockbuster film or TV series. No surprise there. The writer and illustrator are both French but the writer is an animation scriptwriter and the illustrator has had an extensive career with Disney, Marvel, and DC. This provides the American style within a Franco-Belgian format.
Overall, it’s a success and I’ll gladly reread as well as follow the series.
August 27, 2022
Rating: 2/5 Stars
The Vikings and the sirens are constantly battling and hating one another.
I picked up a ton of graphic novels this summer from the library. I like to read graphic novels every so often because they are fast and because they for me act as a palate cleanser from all the fantasy books I read and then sometimes all the rom coms. Plus, I tend to find some great graphic novels with amazing plot lines. However, this graphic novel I absolutely hated and wish I could have DNFed, but this is a short graphic novel with only 112 pages, so I didn’t see the point of DNFing. I do think the concept is interesting and I like that this about Vikings and sirens. But, this was so hard to follow at times and the dialogue was awful.
The Vikings and the sirens are constantly battling and hating one another.
I picked up a ton of graphic novels this summer from the library. I like to read graphic novels every so often because they are fast and because they for me act as a palate cleanser from all the fantasy books I read and then sometimes all the rom coms. Plus, I tend to find some great graphic novels with amazing plot lines. However, this graphic novel I absolutely hated and wish I could have DNFed, but this is a short graphic novel with only 112 pages, so I didn’t see the point of DNFing. I do think the concept is interesting and I like that this about Vikings and sirens. But, this was so hard to follow at times and the dialogue was awful.
April 28, 2021
Beautifully drawn but disjointed as a story. Would have been better for me if done chronologically and parts of the story fleshed out more - establishing relationships of two of the characters and following them rather than showing only bits that had direct bearing on the plot - I understand that this is a lot of story to tell in few pages, but it could have been more coherent with a smaller story-scope. This felt like two full stories crammed into one volume that doesn't have a full story. The materials at the end were not helpful.
November 20, 2022
I loved the art style. I loved the creatures. I found the pacing to be really off in the second half and I hated the love triangle story line. And I didn't like any of the main characters except for the sirens. The Jarl's kid and the half troll were just plain annoying once they started getting messy with their feelings. The world has a lot of potential and I just felt like the juvenile high-school cheating and love triangle was a really weak angle to go with.
July 17, 2023
Although the storytelling in this book is ultimately a little bland, Sirens of the Norse Sea features some great art and colouring, resulting in many attractive panels. The various Viking and Siren characters are nicely designed and drawn, but both of these adventures would benefit from better scripts and dialogue to fully immerse the reader in their battle.
March 2, 2021
Début de série fort intrigant. Mélange d’histoire et de fantastique. Dessin rappelant parfois les comic books (spécialement les X-Men) des années 90. En espérant que les prochains tomes prévus soient â la hauteur.
January 1, 2022
Riktigt bra illustrerat, dock faller handlingen platt. För lite djup och för lite story, kunde mer än väl vara 20 sidor längre. Men innlustrationerna är väldigt bra och handlingen kring det nordiska gör ändå att serieboken får en välförtjänt 3:a.
November 5, 2022
I really liked the second half about Freydis, there was so much more lore, plus ngl the first part (the scourge of the abyss) was hella boring and moved way too fast for me to really care about any of the characters
December 1, 2022
Really enjoyed this adventure. Reminded me of Skyrim a bit with the Nords and trolls. But if I'm supposed to feel any sort of sympathy for the Nord's son, it's a definite no. Most of the characters in this book were assholes, including him.
June 2, 2021
Stunning artwork, but the story is very disjointed and condensed. Should be a minimum of 2, ideally 3 volumes.
July 5, 2021
These tales of the ongoing war between humans and merfolk are fun adventures, but don’t push any envelopes.
July 17, 2021
Artwork was reasonably decent. Stories were very similar though.
December 11, 2021
An interesting book, did hope there was a second volume.
April 9, 2022
First half was a pretty weak jilted lover story, second half was much stronger
September 26, 2025
Both stories were kind of predictable, but it was still fun to walk into a Norse-inspired world in comic book form.
January 17, 2022
Well I don't know if it was a translation issue or what was the cause of these set of stories to be so lacking. The passage of time, dialogue and pacing seemed to be missing in rather large chunks in this book. There was also a lack of care or interest for me, the reader, for any of the characters.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 41 reviews