This is not one of those ancient Greece set books where women behave as they actually would have had to, so if you can't set that sense of disbelief aside, this one is not for you.
The Spartans really don't seem like the type that would ever let an outsider female learn their warrior ways, so right off the bat, this book is unbelievable. That's the main premise of the beginning. Daphne and her two older brothers are outsiders, adopted by one of the politicians of Sparta, so they're raised somewhat privileged. The eldest is married and a stick in the mud. The younger brother you barely get to meet, though he comes across as irresponsible. Daphne herself is your typical feminist protagonist that feels very anachronistic. She wins a duel against a male warrior and then is allowed to compete in this men-only super important race when her second brother doesn't show up. If you can make it past these scenes without being completely taken out of the story, you should be good for the rest of the book.
Daphne plows into the nearby woods, tracking the deer whose neck she must get a wreath from, alongside her maybe crush and some other dudes. Separated from the others, she runs into Artemis. The gods make their presence known very early and don't ever go away. Artemis is threatening and scary. She gives Daphne the Midas Curse, which means liquid gold runs across her skin constantly and it allows Artemis to have a hold on her. Artemis wants Daphne to help Olympus regain nine things that were stolen from it, because the loss of these things is draining the power of the Olympians. She turns her brother who never showed up at the race into a deer to really convince Daphne she's got to help her.
So Daphne leaves Sparta alongside Apollo, who also is on this quest for reasons that are layered and don't get revealed until nearer the end. Lykou, Daphne's maybe crush, follows them but is caught by Apollo and turned into a large black wolf. It is mentioned a few times that maybe the gods should stop turning people into animals if they want their help.
I'm going to sum up the action fairly quickly and spoilery. Daphne and Apollo travel to see Prometheus, who gives cryptic prophetic advice only to Daphne. Then they're off to Knossos, because Minos has three of the nine things. They meet Theseus there and he joins their group. Daphne battles the minotaur and wins. She frees the three things that were stolen and it's revealed that they're the Muses. The group is then off to Thebes to stop the "plague of Thebes," which anyone with any myth knowledge is going to know is the Sphinx. On the way, they get captured by asshole centaurs and fight them alongside Hippolyta of the Amazons, who briefly is part of the team. The Sphinx scenes are my favorite of the questy battle-type scenes. There are a lot of other monsters captured by the Sphinx and Daphne frees them all. Many of them promise to come to her aid in the future, though that is never played out in this book. I'm hoping the author remembers it and we see at least one of them in the sequel. Three more Muses are now free. With the Sphinx defeated, Theseus could go on to rule Athens but instead chooses to complete the quest and he's killed by Minos in the next scene. Minos has been stalking them so the group has to battle him, as well as Phobos and Deimos. After killing them all, the group moves on. They go to Eleusis to hopefully catch Persephone there and they do, so we meet her and Demeter. Then it's down to the Underworld with Persephone guiding the way. At the Styx, Apollo trades his passage for the freedom of two more Muses. Daphne is on her own from there on out. She battles Arachne and is fatally poisoned, then faces Ares and Hermes, who have both been helping the big bad who stole the Muses in the first place. Daphne stabs them both, thinking she killed them, but she didn't. They're out of the fight though. Then Daphne has to fight the big bad herself: Nyx. She can see the sky in the Underworld, so she reaches up and plucks Artemis's bow from the crescent moon. Apollo explained a few times earlier in the story that he and his sister each have a bow with a single shot. Artemis's can kill, Apollo's can resurrect. So Daphne uses Artemis's death shot to kill Nyx, though only her body, and at the same time, Apollo appears and uses his shot to resurrect Daphne. She wakes in Olympus and meets almost all the gods. Zeus makes her promise to become the Storm of Olympus and battle for them again in the future. She agrees, but only after making him swear to keep her family and friends out of it this time. Then she heads for Sparta, alongside a restored to human Lykou and Pyrrhus, the brother that Artemis turned into a deer.
If that giant paragraph is a mostly quick summary, you can see how much stuff goes on in this book. And those were only the major plot points. One of the book's best features is that it is absolutely action-packed and mostly fast-paced. The hits always keep coming for poor Daphne.
Let's see, where to begin now that we've covered plot?
There are a lot of mythological aspects to this, though none of them are accurate. I think even the Goddess Girls series does myth more accurately than this book, but I warned about that from the start. Obviously, this is the myth of Apollo and Daphne, but the only thing replicated here is that Apollo constantly flirts with Daphne. She's not a river nymph. He's not spelled by Eros. She does flee from his advances, but she's not physically running away. And she does give in a few times. Their romance is an okay aspect of the book. You can see her feelings progress over the weeks they're doing this quest, though his are there from the start and you wonder alongside Daphne how much of them are real. She keeps her distance because she knows the myths of Apollo and doesn't trust any god very much. So they kiss a few times, but it goes nowhere really. Maybe poor Lykou has a chance after all. Other myths covered are the ones involving Theseus and the minotaur and the sphinx. Again, nothing like the myths. Ariadne gives Daphne a map of the labyrinth and she doesn't give a shit about Theseus. And Daphne is the one to best the sphinx.
The language in the book takes some getting used to because it's peppered through with Greek words. There's a glossary in the back but zero pronunciation guide. Authors, if you're going to continually use words from other languages, DO include pronunciation in your glossaries! The majority of people who read this book are not going to have taken ancient Greek like I did.
Daphne is a mostly likeable character. She's a bit on the Mary Sue side. Like she already broke boundaries by being a female Spartan warrior, but she also has to be the one to kill the minotaur AND the sphinx? And beat Minos, Hermes and Ares? And Arachne? And a lot of others? I get that the author is going for some girl power heroic thing here, but it comes across as a little bit too much. Flip the myths on their heads, but if you get too superheroish, it gets to be too much. Daphne's backstory is interesting because her mother died in childbirth and there's a lot of mystery going on here. It's revealed over the course of the book that water can restore her (though it doesn't always) and that she has ichor in her veins, so she's not human. She's some sort of demigod. Her father remains a mystery at the end and her mother isn't well explained either. There's this whole thing with Princess Koronis, a human that Apollo fell for, but she loved another, so he and Artemis basically destroyed Koronis's kingdom. He got into a fight with Zeus over it and Zeus eventually punished him by making him protector of the Muses, which is why he's along on this quest. But it's said the Koronis thing happened a very long time ago, yet it also seems hinted that she's Daphne's mom because Daphne looks just like her. It's confusing and it needs a lot of work. But Daphne is definitely some sort of demigod and she has powers that she'll eventually learn. This somewhat helps with her ability to constantly survive and win all these big fights, but without any big reveal of her heritage, it's still frustrating. But yeah, she's pretty likeable.
Apollo is okay. I didn't believe in him as the love interest because I had the same reservations Daphne did. His constant flirting gets annoying, but he holds his own in several scenes. I felt the same way about Theseus. The male characters aren't nearly as fleshed out as Daphne. It's clear she's the sole focus in the author's mind, but that weakens her supporting cast a lot. I cared more about wolf Lykou than Apollo or Theseus.
The other gods you don't see much. Demeter and Persephone were both great. Hades is, too. Persephone explains that she wanted to come to the Underworld, so you've got the nicer version of Hades/Persephone here. Hypnos was the other standout, as he helped Daphne a couple times, even though he's Nyx's son. Hermes betrayed Olympus because he wanted to take over while Ares just wanted constant war. Aphrodite and Hera both dislike Daphne because of the Ares thing.
Oh, Hippolyta. She was awesome. She got better characterization in a few pages than the males did the entire book, I thought. I think she'll be back in the sequel, as she mentioned Penthesilea and the second one covers the Trojan War.
I also liked this version of Ariadne and wished we saw more of her.
Again, it's clear the author gives more thought to her female cast than male. I get the intention behind it, but when you're dealing with a co-ed ensemble cast, it's not the best approach.
All in all, this wasn't a bad book. A little YA flowery in some places, but on the other hand, for fuck's sake, if you have the money to buy horses and food constantly, buy some clean clothes. I got tired of Daphne saying how dirty she was. It wasn't too heavy on the romance and definitely went more for the action and story, which I agree with. I'm hoping the sequel is the same but we clear up some of Daphne's backstory mystery. I also hope she doesn't end up as the star of the Trojan War and Troy will somehow win just because she's there. Make her a little less heroic, please. We get it. Women can be written as heroes in Greek myth, too, but take it down a couple notches.
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