Review by deeb_reads - Blood of Hercules

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deeb_reads 's review for:

Blood of Hercules by Jasmine Mas

1.5

dark funny lighthearted medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: N/A

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Full review to come.... Blood of Hercules is to New Adult mythology books what Sharknado is to disaster movies, or My Immortal is to mid-aughts fanfiction. It's a chaotic mashup of its genre's excesses and corniest tendencies, creating a nonsensical and artistically poor, but occasionally hilarious, work of fiction. (The possibly unintentional hilarity of the main character's narration is the only thing that adds a half star to this book.) The worldbuilding sticks to Greek mythology about as closely as My Immortal adheres to Harry Potter canon... i.e., not at all, beyond taking recognizable names and slapping them on characters made unrecognizable by their "goffik" makeovers. (Greek deities are actually superpowered beings called "Spartans," none of them are actually related to each other, and they're nonsensically divided between the boring, goody good "Olympians" and the edgy, violent "Chthonics.") It's also the future, for some reason. Alexis, our main character and narrator, is a classic overpowered, secretly sexy nerd who all the alpha male secondary characters are obviously in love with. The main saving grace is that her narration is (possibly unintentionally) hilarious, filled with over the top quirky antics and running jokes about her past writing sexual fanfiction about famed mathematician Carl Gauss. Her best friend is an equally hilarious talking snake named Nyx, who possesses a millennial white woman's love of "slay" and "bestie" and is comically horny and bloodthirsty. The guy characters (except Drex, love Drex) were all douchey, dubcon alpha males I hated with a burning passion. The plot makes no fucking sense and drags on for three million years, until everything happens in the last 5 chapters.

Was it good? Of course not. Did I have a blast though? Mostly yes.

Content Warnings