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3.75 AVERAGE
3.75 AVERAGE
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Genuinely so fun!
I'm a bit burnt out on Greek Mythology retellings, which says a lot as someone who has a major life long fixation on Greek Mythology (I love you Jennifer Saint and Madeline Miller but lawd there's so much) but this was a fully original story, and while the original gods are in the story to an extent, it's not really in an old Mythology way.
Premise is that the original 12 were exiled from Olympus, are made human every 7 years for a Hunt, and if you kill a god, you become that god. There are ancient houses (family lines from the original heroes - Jason, Odysseus, Heracles, etc) who participate and it's an all out war for 7 days every 7 years.
MC is the last of her bloodline and stopped participating in the hunt when her entire family was murdered by the now-Ares. She winds up not-on-purpose teaming up with her old BFF from a rival House, one of the Original 12, and her extremely human roommate.
It's fun! It's highstakes adventure set in NYC! There's an underground fighting ring that is never mentioned after the first chapter! There's a whole political set up for KILLING ACTUAL LITERAL GODS. There's SO much civilian casualties that are just glossed over! There's manipulation! Gay love that develops from enemies to the lovers part in under 24h (true to life)!
it was good actually! I had fun reading it and I liked the way things were wrapped up, even if it was a BIIIIT polished for everything that happened.
I'm a bit burnt out on Greek Mythology retellings, which says a lot as someone who has a major life long fixation on Greek Mythology (I love you Jennifer Saint and Madeline Miller but lawd there's so much) but this was a fully original story, and while the original gods are in the story to an extent, it's not really in an old Mythology way.
Premise is that the original 12 were exiled from Olympus, are made human every 7 years for a Hunt, and if you kill a god, you become that god. There are ancient houses (family lines from the original heroes - Jason, Odysseus, Heracles, etc) who participate and it's an all out war for 7 days every 7 years.
MC is the last of her bloodline and stopped participating in the hunt when her entire family was murdered by the now-Ares. She winds up not-on-purpose teaming up with her old BFF from a rival House, one of the Original 12, and her extremely human roommate.
It's fun! It's highstakes adventure set in NYC! There's an underground fighting ring that is never mentioned after the first chapter! There's a whole political set up for KILLING ACTUAL LITERAL GODS. There's SO much civilian casualties that are just glossed over! There's manipulation! Gay love that develops from enemies to the lovers part in under 24h (true to life)!
it was good actually! I had fun reading it and I liked the way things were wrapped up, even if it was a BIIIIT polished for everything that happened.
adventurous
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
N/A
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
I enjoyed this book felt like it lacked an oomph and I’m not quite sure what that was. I love Greek mythology and as one user put it it is like it combined with a version of the Hunger Games. I would still recommend this book to a friend.
adventurous
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
emotional
tense
medium-paced
adventurous
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Loveable characters:
No
- Really ok. Just ok.
Okay so, first things first, GREAT storyline, and everything.
But the book was hard to keep up with, and very confusing. Maybe I was just too young to enjoy this to the fullest. But yeah, every time I got back to reading it after a break, I would be super confused as to what exactly is happening.
Secondly, the ending was kind of anti-climactic in my opinion? And I felt like a lot of things that were important, weren't explained properly, leaving me guessing what's happening? Where are we? How did we get here? But either way, I loved reading it, even if I'm not happy it took me this long to finish it. Definitely worth recommending!
But the book was hard to keep up with, and very confusing. Maybe I was just too young to enjoy this to the fullest. But yeah, every time I got back to reading it after a break, I would be super confused as to what exactly is happening.
Secondly, the ending was kind of anti-climactic in my opinion? And I felt like a lot of things that were important, weren't explained properly, leaving me guessing what's happening? Where are we? How did we get here? But either way, I loved reading it, even if I'm not happy it took me this long to finish it. Definitely worth recommending!
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Once every Seven Years Nine Greek Gods are forced to walk the earth as mortals, hunted by the descendant’s of ancient bloodlines all in search of their powers. Lore thought herself long out of this world, but on the eve of the most recent Agon she finds one of the God’s bleeding on her doorstep and is once again drawn into the world of brutality when she finds she can’t pass up the chance for revenge for the brutal murder of her family years ago. But this Agon seems different, one of the God’s is aligning the houses together and building a force like none that have been seen before, Lore will find herself having to place her trust in the people she thought she had left behind if she, and humanity are to make it out alive.
Lore is a totally kick ass character and I loved how she wasn’t wholly good, she gets tested a lot through this book and doesn’t always make the right decisions, but that just makes her more believable and relatable as a character. Her story is told via the present and through flashbacks, which are vitally important to her story, and when you come to understand how she got to where she is now, you understand her motives and the reasoning behind some of her more sketchy actions. She may but on a big and brave face, but underneath it all she is still a little girl who blames herself for the worst event of her life and doesn’t think she can be redeemed. Her story is heart breaking in parts, but her snarky attitude and tendency to punch first, ask questions later bring a levity to the story, as do some of the side characters.
I have to say, there wasn’t a character in this book I didn’t like. I mean, I didn’t ‘like’ the bad guy, but he was just so incredibly well written. Lore completes her journey alongside a rather odd cast of side characters, her ‘unblooded’ friend Miles, the boy she thought dead, an ancient God and two friends from her past, and she has to rely on every single one of them to help her complete her goal. I loved the addition of Miles because it gave the author a really simple and effective way to introduce us to Lore’s world without it getting info dumpy, plus he’s an absolute cinnamon roll and I just loved him.
There’s a feminist underbelly to this story that I just adored and is greatly missing in Greek Mythology as a whole. Bracken shows the reality of life as a woman in an ‘old fashioned’ world, within the world of ‘Lore’ it is only the male descendants of the ancient bloodlines that are allowed to ascend, and the one time a women did claim the power she was shunned from the community and constantly hunted. But she also shows how women have been greatly misrepresented throughout history, there’s a great example of this with Athena in the book, and also how it’s complete bull that men are stronger than women, she shows that men crave power when women crave to end it, and I loved all of the relationships and scenes that she wrote into the book to show this.
You all know how much I love mythology in a book, so it’s no surprise when I say that I adored delving into Brackens take on a modern ancient Greek world, she blends the modern and the mythological with ease and I loved how she took the ancient God’s powers but put a more modern spin on them to fit into ‘Lore’s’ world. While there’s a whole heap about this book that I loved, I really think this would have worked better as a duology. As a whole the pacing of this book was way off, Bracken does a great job of slowly introducing us to her world, but because of that the end went at a break neck pace and I had to re-read so many different parts because I kept missing bits. I also feel like the author bit off a little more than she could chew with the mythology and differing story lines, if you’re gonna write a stand-alone, fantastic, but you have to make sure that everything can get tied together in a neat bow by the end and that just didn’t happen.
Overall, there was a lot to love about this book, but the pacing and overload of information and different story lines just let it down a little. I think if you’re going to enjoy this book, you should go in knowing that it’s going to get a little overwhelming in parts, there will be questions that don’t get answered and the ending will come across as a little too easy, but if you tend to stay more for the characters than the story line, you will probably end up enjoying this one.
Lore is a totally kick ass character and I loved how she wasn’t wholly good, she gets tested a lot through this book and doesn’t always make the right decisions, but that just makes her more believable and relatable as a character. Her story is told via the present and through flashbacks, which are vitally important to her story, and when you come to understand how she got to where she is now, you understand her motives and the reasoning behind some of her more sketchy actions. She may but on a big and brave face, but underneath it all she is still a little girl who blames herself for the worst event of her life and doesn’t think she can be redeemed. Her story is heart breaking in parts, but her snarky attitude and tendency to punch first, ask questions later bring a levity to the story, as do some of the side characters.
I have to say, there wasn’t a character in this book I didn’t like. I mean, I didn’t ‘like’ the bad guy, but he was just so incredibly well written. Lore completes her journey alongside a rather odd cast of side characters, her ‘unblooded’ friend Miles, the boy she thought dead, an ancient God and two friends from her past, and she has to rely on every single one of them to help her complete her goal. I loved the addition of Miles because it gave the author a really simple and effective way to introduce us to Lore’s world without it getting info dumpy, plus he’s an absolute cinnamon roll and I just loved him.
There’s a feminist underbelly to this story that I just adored and is greatly missing in Greek Mythology as a whole. Bracken shows the reality of life as a woman in an ‘old fashioned’ world, within the world of ‘Lore’ it is only the male descendants of the ancient bloodlines that are allowed to ascend, and the one time a women did claim the power she was shunned from the community and constantly hunted. But she also shows how women have been greatly misrepresented throughout history, there’s a great example of this with Athena in the book, and also how it’s complete bull that men are stronger than women, she shows that men crave power when women crave to end it, and I loved all of the relationships and scenes that she wrote into the book to show this.
You all know how much I love mythology in a book, so it’s no surprise when I say that I adored delving into Brackens take on a modern ancient Greek world, she blends the modern and the mythological with ease and I loved how she took the ancient God’s powers but put a more modern spin on them to fit into ‘Lore’s’ world. While there’s a whole heap about this book that I loved, I really think this would have worked better as a duology. As a whole the pacing of this book was way off, Bracken does a great job of slowly introducing us to her world, but because of that the end went at a break neck pace and I had to re-read so many different parts because I kept missing bits. I also feel like the author bit off a little more than she could chew with the mythology and differing story lines, if you’re gonna write a stand-alone, fantastic, but you have to make sure that everything can get tied together in a neat bow by the end and that just didn’t happen.
Overall, there was a lot to love about this book, but the pacing and overload of information and different story lines just let it down a little. I think if you’re going to enjoy this book, you should go in knowing that it’s going to get a little overwhelming in parts, there will be questions that don’t get answered and the ending will come across as a little too easy, but if you tend to stay more for the characters than the story line, you will probably end up enjoying this one.