A review by justiceofkalr
Ares: Bringer of War by George O'Connor

4.0

Okay, so this is about Ares. But, Ares is kind of a terrible guy, as the surprisingly gory intro to this volume describes. Ares is "to rejoice in death, dismemberment, destruction... to climb atop a pile of your enemies, to hold out your arms soaked in gore and laugh." Yeah, that did get a little dark for a kid's book, but there's really no getting around the fact that Ares is the violent side of war. Moving on... this book is really more about the Trojan war than it is about Ares, and lots of the gods feature pretty heavily in this volume. Ares mostly just shows up and gets beaten (mentally and physically) by Athena. Even Zeus, Ares' own father, goes on a rant about how terrible he is. So while he's mega-violent angry, it's not portrayed positively. I loved so much of this: Iris getting an appearance, Aphrodite and Ares clearly having a thing going on, Athena generally winning, Aeneas going off to found Rome, Aphrodite being her snarky sassy self, Hephaistos getting to show off. I also loved the fact that it really showed that the Trojan war was in large part a struggle among the gods and the mortals just got caught up in it and suffered for it.