(For some reason it won't let me share the link to my StoryGraph Review so I'm gonna copy and paste the review itself:)
In Ancient Greece, the Twelve Gods demand the ultimate tribute – food, treasure, even human sacrifice.
There are some mortals who cling to a desperate prophecy – telling of one to come who’ll set them free. But few truly believe it.
Until Danae, a fisherman's daughter, eats a mysterious golden apple. And suddenly, her life unravels and a strange and dangerous path unfolds before her.
Chased from her home, she neither understands nor fully controls her future. One which will find Danae walking the winding roads of heroes. There, she encounters and befriends the mighty demi-god, Heracles. Together, they will seek out monsters to battle.
But Danae’s destiny is not to fight beasts.
She will hunt the Gods.
She will drag them screaming from Olympus . . .
My Rating: 2.5 Stars
My (Longish) Review Bellow:
My friend saw this cover in Waterstones and suggested it up for me because I'm back in my Greek Myth phase again. I checked some of the reviews and it was a bit of a 50/50 for whether it was good or not but figured I'd try it anyway. So I bought it, read it and...
Meh.
First off, I see why a lot of people say it feels like the author just wanted to show off her knowledge of Greek Mythology. There seemed to be a bit of a theme of having the main character run through places, meet people and hear tales, and then move on just as quickly. At certain times it felt a little like one of those kids show the main character falls through the TV and experiencing all the moments and tales for themselves and learning about it all along a fun PG adventure. It doesn't really flow as much as it feels like it's been chopped up and stuck together.
There's also a bunch of needless plot twist at the end. Like there were two moments in the last few chapters that felt very rushed and random and just like, did we really need that? Did that really have to be a thing?
[This paragraphs contains major spoilers for the end of the book. If you would like to avoid this, please skip this paragraph. Thank you.]
One of my biggest peeve is the plot twist that the Gods were once mortals. I never watched the show Kaos but I read some plot of wiki and honestly, the twist where Gods were not Gods but mortals stealing power really pissed me off. It's one of those ideas that might work if the whole story was about it, but as a twist at the end of a series or book, it just feels cheap and lame. Especially for people like myself who picked up this book to read about the Greek Gods and Greek Mythology. So for it to be revealed that none of that is real and even demi Gods are not a thing and that it was all an ellaborate lie, it doesn't draw me in. In fact it really turns me off and I really don't see myself getting any future sequels, mostly for that reason.
[End of spoilers]
There were also some other parts that just rubbed me the wrong way.
Just for example, Ares is one of my favourite Greek Gods so when I read that he would be trying his luck on Danae and Hermes even hinted he would be the most threatening as he hated to lose... Only for Ares to send his birds and then... Nothing? That's it. A nice cool build up and the great God Of War sent some vicious birds that were handled rather easily and then... Gave up?
Even Athena, again, another God of War, get's kind of watered down. Big powerful Gods go up against this mysterious entity and they all run at the first sign of a struggle? At least for Apollo and the Harpies there was reason they stopped (because they thought they'd succeeded) but then the story takes two powerful Gods and has one give up without trying and the other run with her tail between her legs. It's a little disgraceful to the source material, which is ironic since - as said before - the author clearly knows and enjoys sharing the myths.
So as a whole the story is, in my opinion, not very well written. It's kind of a jumble of too many ideas that go all over the place, building up some characters only to have them disappear in the very next chapter while having other characters come and go so quickly, you wonder why they even bothered.
As for the characters themselves, this is where the book is at least a little better. All the characters are well written and interesting. They're distinct and I genuinely did like almost all of them for a variety of reasons and even Danae is a nice character to follow along with. I will say none of them were especially loveable but they were likeable.
Except for Heracles. I found Heracles to be a very cliche and boring version of himself. The author tried to give him his tragic backstory and a bit of his anger issues and yet we didn't really have time to see it so again, it felt like the author was just showing us what she knew of his original story. A weird thing was, considering the blurb makes a big deal of him, it takes us 200 pages before we even meet him. So as said, amongs with everything else the author is trying to squeeze together, it means we get very little from Heracles which leaves him feeling incomplete as a character. Like the build is there but there's no time for him to develop or for us to really get to know him passed the basics.
There's also an incredibly brief romance that I'll just say, I did not like. It came out of nowhere, it lasted barely a chapter, and then it was done. It was one of those things that could have (and really should have) been skipped and it wouldn't affect the story at all. In fact the story probably would have been better because the focus could have been on more important things.
As a whole I don't want to say the book is awful. It started out great and has good moments. As said, the rest of the characters are interesting and nice to follow along with and the general idea is a good one. But I feel the execution was poorly managed and I ended up skimming a lot of the end because I was just ready to be done with it. Sadly a big let down considering how excited I was when I started. Still, not terrible but certainly not great either.
The Rhythm of War by Brandon Sanderson
My love affair with The Stormlight Archive continues and my feelings grow more ardent with each passing book. I love the way that Sanderson creates space for his heroes to grow in ways that are new and unexpected (i.e. everything about Kaladin’s arc in this book), while also giving characters who have traditionally been sidelined their time in the sun…
