Eddie and Jordan join a team of archaeologists hoping to uncover Thor's hammer, purported to be a powerful weapon and therefore likely to be very attractive to the Gua.

Leave aside the Norse mythology and the ludicrous concept that the Viking's managed to do so much warring by travelling in time and space, and this is a pretty traditional episode of First Wave: the team versus a group of Gua and a couple of humans, who naturally get caught in the crossfire. The only real difference here is that Cade is mainly absent, trapped in a spatial pocket and unable to escape, thereby allowing Jordan and Eddie to take centre stage for a change.

And it's a combination that works: Eddie uses his brains to good effect while Jordan plays the action hero role. Admittedly it does seem to suggest that the two of them make up one Foster between them, but it's good to see them pull together under pressure and fill in for their lost leader.

There are still a few problems: the group gets captured, either separately or together way too often for my liking, only to be let go, escape or generally have their death sentence commuted when one of the Gua thinks of something more important to do. The hammer itself doesn't get a lot of explanation, and having the Gua holding it get sucked into a nether-realm doesn't really provide a satisfactory conclusion, when you'd think he could easily escape using the same item that got him in. Cade's escape is also too easy and could have been more dramatic if someone had had to go in after him, but as a basic action-adventure story, it's good enough.

***

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