Reviews with content warning for War - A Touch of Chaos

If the Greek gods were still around they would punish this woman (the author) in many, many ways for writing such a terrible book about them.

I have no issue with smut books and romances using Greek mythology as a base or whatever. That’s fine! And can be really good.

But this book is such a mess.

It tries to invoke way too many characters. It is the end of a series where the author went back halfway through and added in multiple other books from the male lead’s POV - so if you didn’t want to line her pockets by reading those additions then trying to understand what was going on in this one was like coming in halfway through a really intense, plot-driven movie with a huge cast.

Additionally, the writing was messy. The sex distracted from the actual movement of the book - EVEN FOR SMUT. And it wasn’t even good sex. It was repetitive and boring.

Her characters have no nuance.

Rape was used as…not even a casual plot device but a detail to throw in randomly to show how awful the antagonist was.

And things that didn’t need to take pages upon pages upon pages upon PAGES to happen took, you know, that long. Whereas the culmination of the final showdown had all sorts of buildup and then the ending was like 3 sentences.

There was no pacing in this entire book.

Like I’m sorry. I wanted to like this. And I liked the original few books…but this was a disaster. And needed a better editor. Or any editor at all, really.

Definitely do not recommend.

Content Warnings

shelbert's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I am so happy to be done with this series. It started out as a good read with the first book, but as it went on, I had a lot of conflicting feelings. This last book was a struggle to get through. There was so much happening that it was hard to understand what I was even reading at some points (especially the battle scenes).

I am intrigued by an upcoming new series about Aphrodite and Hephaestus by Scarlett, but I'm not sure if I'll actually read it or not yet. I really wanted to like these books, I didn't hate them, but it was cringy and overly sappy most of the time. Maybe it's just not meant for me lol. However I am happy it got me to read 7 books so far in this year.

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renee_fae's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional lighthearted mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

frantically's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.5

Sadly, not nearly as strong as the previous books and really disappointing in some aspects.

I still love Hades and Persephone and they were definitely the highlight in this book for me but it didn't even feel like a Hades and Persephone a book at some point, just...a war book. I also feel like we've lost any aspect of a "modern" retelling – Persephone's media job seems non-existent and all the time is spent in the underworld anyway.

Hermes is reduced to nothing more than comic relief (and bad one at that) and Apollo doesn't appear until like 80% in.

Sooo many people and gods died in this and it all felt so inconsequential and basically noone mourned?? There's horrid things happening and we just don't get any satisfying conclusions.

Definitely my least favourite of the series 🥲 Still love the rest of them though 🫶🏻

Content Warnings