I'm such a slacker.
Eos's book released in December 2018 and I am finally tackling it now. It's been fun rereading the entire series! But it's time to do the two most recent books and then we wait until December for a brand new Persephone story! (It's seriously about time.)
Eos's book has...a lot. There is a lot going on here. Wow.
We met Eos briefly in Nyx's book. The two girls pass each other as Nyx's work night comes to an end and Eos's begins. However, unlike Nyx, Eos only works for about half an hour, producing the dawn colors until her older brother Helios brings the day. Eos also has an older sister named Selene, goddess of the moon.
Eos lives with her mother, Theia, who is a Titaness. She's described in the book as the "goddess of shiny things," but it's really more like the goddess of shining and brightness. She does give precious metals their shine, so Theia being into jewelry in the book makes sense. Eos chooses to go to a mortal school because she holds a grudge against Zeus and wants to be nowhere near him. You see, Eos's father is Hyperion, one of the Titans who fought against Zeus in the Titanomachy. Hyperion is being held in Tartarus as punishment and Eos is mad at him for promising to come home and not being able to and at Zeus for putting him there.
So Eos's daily life consists of getting up early, bringing the dawn for half an hour, then going home to prepare for her school day. She can turn herself into vapor and shrink herself, so her bedroom is actually the inside of a large urn.
Eos's school life is complicated. She's the only immortal, so many of the students are in awe of her. She also talks about how she's interested by so many things that she's constantly obsessing about a new interest and then setting it aside for the next one. So she runs many school clubs and participates in a lot of activities. She and her mother both like to keep themselves busy, likely as a coping mechanism.
During a scrollbook club meeting, Eos is insulted by a rather stupid mortal named Zoe. Eos flies threateningly over her before reigning in her anger and regaining composure. She thinks back to an incident in second grade when a girl named Nefili insulted Hyperion, and Eos yanked her into the air and threatened to drop her. (I can find no reference for this incident. The only Nephele is a cloud nymph that has nothing to do with Eos.) But since then, Eos has vowed not to unveil her powers or wings at school. The mortal girls in this club are another example of characters being negative and not getting any comeuppance. Why be in a book club if you're not going to read the book? Eos has a right to say what she did and the girls were stupid for crossing her and insulting her, goddess or not. The only further mention of them is Eos later on thinking that she'll let one of them run the club and suffer the annoyance of no one doing the reading.
So let's pause a moment and review. We've got Eos struggling with negative feelings relating to her father's imprisonment and we've got her struggling with not fitting in at school due to her immortal status.
Now we can introduce another major character. Eos's best friend is a mortal boy named Tithonus, who is obsessed with bugs. Eos's third struggle is that she knows Tithonus will only be with her for a relatively short time, so she wishes he was immortal, too.
Those are all the things weighing on her mind. Now we get to the actual plot. Nyx tossed Eos a notescroll and invited her to Ephesus to watch the unveiling of Nyx's statue at Artemis's temple. Eos accepts the invitation and for the first time, goes to be around multiple other immortals. She gets Ares' autograph for Tithonus and tries to pin down Apollo, because she thinks he can help her make Tithonus immortal. She ends up being invited to stay at MOA for the night, using Aphrodite's room because she and Persephone are sleeping at Demeter's.
Eos enjoys her time with the immortals and does get Apollo to do a prophecy for her, saying that Zeus will grant Tithonus immortality. She goes to see Zeus and uses the prophecy itself to get him to agree to help. It's an interesting twist. She made Apollo give her a prophecy, which went in her favor, and then because of that prophecy, Zeus granted her request. So Apollo foresaw Zeus granting her request, but he only did so because Apollo foresaw it. It's twisty kinda like time travel. However, due to the wording of everything, it's Eos that has to grant Tithonus immortality. Zeus gives her the ability to do so, which expires in 24 hours, but he doesn't tell her how to do it!
Are you ready for another crazy plot? Yeah, we're not done yet.
So earlier when Eos asked for Ares' autograph, she thought she saw Aphrodite frowning at them. Naturally then, it's Ares who comes to Eos for help, catching her on her way back from Zeus's office. He takes her to the boys' dorm, which is seen by Pheme, because...get this...there's a spider in his room and he heard she's got bug knowledge thanks to her friend Tithonus. Ares is afraid of spiders. Yep. Eos helps him out and sets the tiny spider outside, but along comes Aphrodite and that's where the real trouble starts.
Because, you see, after 24 previous books of having a crush on Ares and not one word of this being mentioned to my memory, Aphrodite suddenly has a jealous streak. Eos mentions that she has a reputation for jealousy, but she's never really been jealous or envious before. Aphrodite summons a bedbug to bite Eos while she sleeps in her room, but she also casts a spell on her, which will cause her to fall in love with three "bugs." It's by far the worst thing any of the main four goddesses have ever done. I'm not sure why the authors decided to make Aphrodite look so bad when they can't even be bothered to punish the random characters who act poorly throughout the series. It's an odd choice for sure.
Granted, it comes directly from myth. Eos slept with Ares in Greek myth, which caused jealous Aphrodite to curse her with insatiable desire. She abducts several males, including Orion, Tithonus, Cephalus and Cleitus. All four of these are mentioned in this book. Eos shows no interest in Orion, but Tithonus is obviously her best friend, and Cephalus and Cleitus are his friends from school.
It works with the myth, but it's still odd to have Aphrodite behave so poorly.
Eos has no idea she's been spelled and goes to the Supernatural Market with some of the other girls. On the way back to MOA, she spies two little black beetles, which she suddenly feels the urge to keep as pets. Athena helps her find a jar for them so she can take them home. Eos names the beetles...Cephalus and Cleitus after the boys from school, who have black hair and wear shiny black tunics all the time. So in a way, she does abduct them.
Upon arriving home, Eos talks with her mom and the subject of Hyperion comes up. Eos had been started when Zeus mentioned him during their meetings, saying he went to the Underworld to play chess with him. Theia also visits him there and invites Eos along with her, telling her where a shortcut is.
Eos goes to see Tithonus next, because she was going to help him with a science fair project. She tries out her immortality spell on him, but it conflicts with Aphrodite's spell and turns Tithonus into a grasshopper, which Eos falls in love with, making him the third "love bug" from the spell. She's able to capture him and get him into a terrarium that he'd been making for his own pet grasshopper. She then takes him into her bedroom urn. While she's there, she gets a notescroll from Aphrodite. Ares came clean...sort of...about what happened and Aphrodite admits to the spells she cast. So she redeems herself a tiny bit, but it doesn't lessen the shock over her behavior for me. Not a bit.
Knowing Eos's immortality spell and Aphrodite's love bug spell conflicted, Eos now knows why Tithonus is now an immortal grasshopper. She doesn't know what to do, but then she remembers her dad won an award for spell-casting and it's off to the Underworld! Taking her mom's shortcut, Eos makes her way to Hyperion's rather nice home in Tartarus. They have an awkward but ultimately promising reunion and thanks to knowing the exact wording of both spells, Hyperion is able to tell Eos what to say to right things. Tithonus will go back to boy form, but also back to being mortal. He never wanted immortality in the first place, so everything works out.
Returning home, Eos is able to change Tithonus back to boy shape just in time, as his mother is there looking for him. He's thrilled about his experience and uses it to make their science project even better. He also retained the ability to distance jump, so he finally can be good at a sport like he always wanted. Eos has to promise not to cast more spells, but she also embraces her goddessgirl differences and decides to be herself more at school. She's visiting her father now and has found that chess helps focus her restless mind, so she's both playing with him in person and via distance. All of her problems are now resolved.
Whew! This book really was quite an unexpected ride. Eos's feelings about her father are some of the most serious and complicated in the entire series, and that's just the tip of the iceberg with this one.
The actual myth of Eos and Tithonus has her asking for him to be immortal, but she forgets to ask for eternal youth, so he's condemned to age forever. She turns him into a cicada out of pity. I think they worked that angle in there pretty well! It's really only Aphrodite's behavior that's strange for this book. If they'd hinted at it throughout the series, it would be one thing, but Aphrodite is always one of the most generous characters.
Up next: Clotho the Fate!
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