The Skald's Black Verse is a promising start to a trilogy, but unfortunately didn't grab me the way I wish it had. The setting is interesting, but undeveloped, and the POV characters are a bit one-note and uninteresting.

The novel takes place in what is on the surface a low-fantasy Norse/Germanic inspired setting, with most of our POV characters being Norns, citizens of a village named Skolja, a small town on a planet that's been occupied and colonized by the Tyrianites, who are a Roman Empire stand-in. The occupation is relatively recent, only a generation or so old, and there's bad blood between the two groups. 

Early on in the novel we learn that there's a comet about to hit the planet's moon, which ends up causing widespread destruction. The main plotline of the novel deals with the Norn/Tyrian tensions in the face of this catastrophe.

This is actually a sci-fi novel - the Tyrianites are capable of interstellar travel and can communicate across the void. It's a really interesting setting, and the end of the novel sets up the story in a nice way, but for me there just wasn't too much going on in this one that hooked me. It felt a bit too much like a "setup" novel with the real story being told in the sequels.