Gather round, this is where the stories are born. This is where the world was made.

Picture it: about you, mile upon mile of sparkling, moonlit rock and snow. Above, the flickering magic of the aurora borealis, an electric-blue contrast to the warm fire where the storyteller weaves his words. He talks of playful, careless, wrathful gods, stories of immortal forces battling under freezing, star-filled skies.

The great Norse myths are woven into the fabric of our storytelling – from Tolkien, Alan Garner and Rosemary Sutcliff to Game of Thrones and Marvel Comics. They are also an inspiration for Neil Gaiman’s own award-bedecked, bestselling fiction.

Now our greatest living fantasist reaches back through time to the original source stories in a thrilling and vivid rendition of the great Norse tales.

Gaiman’s gods are thoroughly alive on the page – irascible, visceral, playful, passionate – and the tales carry us from the beginning of everything to Ragnarök and the twilight of the gods. Galvanised by Gaiman’s prose, Thor, Loki, Odin and Freya are irresistible forces for modern readers and the crackling, brilliant writing demands to be read aloud around an open fire on a freezing, starlit night.