Wednesday, December 2, 2015

A TREASURY OF GLORIOUS GODDESSES: Call Me Isis


Call Me Isis is the first book in the new A Treasury of Glorious Goddesses series. Goosebottom Books has done two other historical series, which you can see here:
http://goosebottombooks.com/home/pages/OurBooks
I have a handful of them and they're decent, though definitely meant for a younger audience.

The Glorious Goddesses series, however, are novels. I'm not good with saying what age groups books are aimed at exactly, but they're less complex than the Dear America series, but a little more adult than Goddess Girls. The writing is actually on a similar level as Goddess Girls, but there are some concepts that are a bit more mature than that series.

I have mixed feelings about the book.

It's told in first person perspective from Isis's point of view. It's written as if she was sitting next to you, telling you the story, so she uses a lot of modern terms like "cool." It's kind of an interesting concept, like the goddess is still around today and her vocabulary has grown with the millennia, but it's also a bit off-putting, because it feels anachronistic.

It's the basic Seth vs. Osiris and then Seth vs. Horus myths, but there's a lot left out and a lot glossed over. She explains some concepts that would seem odd to kids, which is good, but skips over others. Like it's never talked about whether the animal-headed gods have their animal heads in the narrative. The research is not the best. The author has Ammut as male, when she's a female demon. Rick Riordan made the same mistake and then covered it up poorly. Why people do not take five seconds to research Ammut, I will never understand. The author also claims that "many" mortal kings and queens of Egypt were brother and sister. Nope. They weren't. Brother and Sister were honorific terms, not literal. The Ptolemies took them literally, but they certainly weren't "many" kings and queens. So that was a bit problematic.

Also, on a personal level, Seth is one of my primary gods and she made him out to be even worse than how that particular myth portrays him. I found that highly unnecessary. And she ignored Isis' more questionable behavior and fabricated other bits that made the goddess seem purely good.

The highlight of the book for me was the last chapter. It's Isis explaining what happened to her as a goddess. She goes through how she was viewed by different religions and actually says that she is still worshipped by some people today. That blew my mind! The recognition of modern worship of an ancient goddess in a kids' book! So all problems aside, I am pleased with this book.

The next book is Call Me Athena (September 9):
http://goosebottombooks.com/home/pages/OurBooksDetail/s4b2-call-me-athenagreek-goddess-of-wisdom

Ah, it says ages 9-13. There you go.

And then Call Me Ixchel (October 14):
http://goosebottombooks.com/home/pages/OurBooksDetail/s4b3-call-me-ixchelmayan-goddess-of-the-moon

I'm very excited about this one because my Mayan mythology knowledge is limited.

A promising new series, though don't always take everything as fact. I do like that there's a section at the back that tells what's from the myth, what's historical fact and what was embellished by the author, but yeah, there were still some screw ups in this volume.

ETA: I never did formal reviews for Athena and Ixchel. I'll try to remember to add them into my monthly reviews.

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