The Games Gods Play

 Hoo boy, I devoured in roughly two days. Would have been a single day if I hadn't had work! 

Owen has developed a world where different pantheons of deities all exist and seem to play an active role in human lives. The focus of the book is the Greek pantheon, but there are various mentions that indicate they're far from the only gods. The Greeks are the focus of the main character's world, though it's unclear how this works exactly. The Greeks are favored in San Francisco, but there's no mention of the US being Greek-focused or if it's different in each location or what. It's not important to the story, but it would be some interesting world-building. I quite like the inclusion of all the gods, so this is a world I'd like to see more from. 

The main character is 23-year-old Lyra Keres. Lyra's mother's water broke in Zeus's temple and, in characteristic Greek myth whim fashion, he cursed baby Lyra to be unlovable. She was given to the Order of Thieves at age three by parents that didn't give a shit about her except as something to pay off their debts. Kids are frequently given to the order so others can pay off debts they owe them. Lyra has long since paid off her debt but chooses to stay with the order because she has nowhere else to go. However, she did poorly in her thief training, so she functions as the order's clerk. 

The book opens right before the start of the Crucible. This is a tradition that happens once every hundred years. The Greek deities apparently fought a war sometime in the past that was really damaging, so they developed this tournament to pick which god would rule for the next hundred years. Each god picks a human to be their champion and take part in twelve different labors, each devised by one of the twelve Olympians. It's sort of like the Hunger Games but with a better purpose and the other humans don't get to watch it on TV. 

After some teasing and embarrassment by an asshole thief, Lyra storms off to Zeus's temple and is about to chuck a rock when she's stopped by Hades. A short time later, he shocks her by choosing her as his champion for the Crucible. The big problem for Lyra is that Hades has never chosen a champion before. As King of the Underworld, he opted not to vie for King of the Gods as well. But now he has a secret motivation and he's chosen Lyra to help him fulfill it. And most of the other gods are pissed about it.

The book switches between Lyra's drama with Hades and her own struggles within herself to the different labors and the heartbreak that comes with them. These aren't easy labors. They're deadly. I loved all the different gifts the gods gave their champions and the ones they could earn for the labor prizes. 

I'm trying not to do spoilers, because this is a really good read and I recommend it. But I have to mention a couple things. 

I think the author had some hate for Athena. I've never read such a nasty characterization of her. The most irritating thing for me with this entire book was that the author somehow in her research missed that Athena is gray-eyed. She's got brown eyes in the book and that took me out of the story with a good bit of irritation for a while. If you're doing enough research to come up with these obscure relics, you really should have seen a reference to gray-eyed Athena somewhere. And then stick by that! I'm so sick of Athena and Anne Shirley losing their gray eyes. 

I'm a pretty diehard Hades/Persephone fan. I've always supported them. So I'm not a huge fan of Lyra/Hades. (Pretty sure this isn't a spoiler. If you didn't see that coming, you're not familiar with this type of book.) It's explained away as Hades thinking of Persephone as a younger sister, which I suppose works, but then there's the added problem of Lyra's curse. Hades pretty clearly is attracted to this mere mortal from the very beginning. Hades, who isn't known for trysting with mortals, unlike the majority of the pantheon, which is one of the reasons I like him. And Lyra, who is cursed to be unlovable, somehow has this curse not even remotely affect Hades? Does it not work on gods? It isn't explained. I was starting to think she was never actually cursed and it was all in her head, with her distancing herself from others being the actual reason no one is close to her. Her friend says something to back this up, so I really thought I was right, but Lyra ends up using her curse to survive a labor. So she is definitely cursed and it just doesn't affect Hades with zero explanation because the author wanted to pair them, I guess. Between that and her behaving like no 23-year-old virgin ever would during their one sex scene, it's clear that the author skirts into bad writing territory just so she can have her couple. Compromising your writing to get what you want is never a good look and that combined with my other nitpicks and my attachment to Hades/Persephone all makes it harder for me to support him and Lyra. I don't dislike Lyra by any means, and while Hades is no Lore Olympus Hades (the very bestest Hades), I still like him. I just don't like the cost the author paid to force them into a couple. 

That said, I obviously mostly loved this to read it that quickly. It's not a short book. I'm looking forward to the sequel, especially with the cliffhanger we were left on. 

Nicole Rayburn 4

I finally got back to Nicole Rayburn's world of historical and present day mysteries. 

This one was my least favorite of the four so far. 

In the present day, a DNA test reveals Nicole's husband Kyle is not his father's son. He ends up getting the story of a drunken, post-near death experience hookup from his mom. She was a cop and this happened with her partner, who eventually became the police chief (or something). He spends a lot of time dealing with this, so the present day stuff is mostly him and less Nicole, which bored me. I like Kyle, but I don't really care about Kyle. 

In the past, we're in 1582. Lady Katherine Stiles has just lost her father and is dealing with learning that he left his estate and title to some random male cousin instead of her. She's got an uncertain future and it only gets worse when cousin Eustace arrives and he's an asshole. She turns to Luke, her childhood friend who worked for her father, and the two plot a bit, but she ends up taking things into her own hands and marrying her cousin. She's 14. He's an older cousin but not as much older as he could have been. It's just what was done back then, but this one is soap opera level. First, Luke discovers Eustace isn't Eustace. He's some actor who was Eustace's companion (yep, they mean that and that's why Eustace was kicked out of seminary school) and who killed Eustace and decided to take his place. Second, Kate is fucking Luke in secret, hoping to get pregnant so she can provide an heir and keep the estate. Maybe something can "happen" to Eustace. But Eustace is very abusive and the scenes with him are rage-inducing. Third, Luke is marrying the cook's daughter and Kate is jealous, even though she knows she can't marry Luke. So the day after the marriage, Kate slips Eustace some deadly nightshade and he gets sick and falls down the stairs, putting him out of commission for a few months. Luke at this point is in bed with both his wife and Kate. I think? Now I can't remember if they overlap. Anyway, Eustace is getting better over time and Kate and Luke fight over it with him basically condemning her to what she's gotten herself into. Kate goes to her neighbor and former suitor Lachlan, who's the only good character in this whole damn thing, and tells him what's going on. He's in love with her and on the unscrupulous side, so he agrees to off Eustace. He makes it look like he threatened him with revealing his lies and Eustace ran away to London, but Lachlan actually keeps him in a tower on his property and ends up killing him. Good. Kate bangs Lachlan and ends up having his baby. And if it couldn't get any more soap operaish, Kate and Luke's wife Hannah go into labor at the same time. Kate and Lachlan's kid is a girl, while Luke and Hannah have a boy, but Hannah passes out and the old nurse switches the kids so Kate can have her heir and never worry about having to marry. So Kate has to watch her daughter be raised by someone else, while she raises their kid as her heir. 

Eeyeah, it's a lot. It feels like just plain too much, especially coming from a 14-year-old. 

Kate is a wildly unlikeable character. I get that she's desperate, but if she'd given Lachlan a chance instead of being selfish and determined to keep her stupid estate, then she would have ended up in a decent and likely eventually happy marriage and still had a large estate. They could have outed fake Eustace and then maybe gotten the original estate, too. But noooooooo.  

So yeah, this is the first one of these I really didn't like. Shapiro needs to dial the plots back down to normal drama and leave the daytime antics to the soaps. 

The next book involves Dr. Quinn Allenby, who's the protagonist of another Shapiro historical mystery series. There are a whopping nine books in the Echoes from the Past series and all of them were written before Nicole Rayburn, so I'm taking a jump over to that series and then coming back for the Nicole/Quinn team up. They're also teaming up in the sixth Nicole book, but at least I'll have done the legwork already. 

Goddess Girls 29

I love the Goddess Girls series, yet for some odd reason, I don't read them right away. I don't think I got through 27 until 28 had come out, but then I finished both quickly. This one I've had since November. 

The sad news is that this is the penultimate Goddess Girls book. They're going out with a bang in early September by releasing a second super special edition. The main girls time travel to back when Athena first started at MOA, but they end up in Rome instead. I'm looking forward to the Roman counterparts. Definitely not going to wait months to read that!

So who is Elpis? If you remember way back to Pandora's book about the "trouble bubbles," you'll remember the golden hope bubble. That's Elpis. After catching Zeus's attention, he offers her a 5-day trial at MOA with the chance to become the Spirit of Hope. He turns her into a golden girl who can make little bubbles appear on herself. She can also shapeshift back and forth between girl and bubble forms. 

Elpis has a lot to learn. She takes to being in human form pretty quickly, but she struggles with trying to do five classes, spend time on granting hope bubbles to mortals, deal with her fledgling crush on Moros, and deal with her rude roommate Apate. 

The new characters introduced in this book are all called spirits. I don't think they gave a distinction between a goddess/god and a spirit. I'm assuming spirits are immortal. They can do magic, same as the deities. 

Moros (the boy on the cover) is the spirit of gloom and doom in the book. Wikipedia calls him the spirit of impending doom and he can allow people to see their deaths. He's a son of Nyx, which makes the Fates his sisters, so there's a nice link there. 

Book Apate (the bright girl in the back) is the spirit of deceit and trickery. She's the personification of deceit in myth, and the daughter of Nyx and Erebus. 

Zelos is the spirit of rivalry. He's male in myth and Nike is one of his siblings. In the book, she has brown hair. 

Koalemos is the spirit of foolishness. In myth, he's another son of Nyx. In the book, she has silver hair. 

There is no set myth the authors are working from this time. None of these characters appear in a myth together. Zelos and Koalemos add absolutely nothing to the story. They're just Apate's henchwomen, basically, but the book would have been the same if they weren't in it. They're kinda fun though. 

Elpis is in ethicsology class on a team with Moros and Apate. A lot of the teachers are on vacation (or something), so there are guest professors. Socrates and sidekick Plato are running ethicsology. The class is divided up and each trio is given an ethical dilemma to present upon. Elpis is saddened to realize the people her team is in charge of are two men she sleepily sent hope bubbles to the night before...and may have encouraged them to go to war. It's the Peloponnesian War. Athens vs. Sparta. The two humans are Pericles and Lysander. She travels to Earth to meet with them and their whole argument is whether to perform a tradegy or a comedy and whether the costumes should be blue or red. Moros, who followed her, assists in coming up with a solution, so the war is ended. Sigh. Sure. 

Apate does nothing to help with the project except cause chaos, because her whole deal is wanting attention from her dad, the unscrupulous dude that runs the Be a Hero shop in the marketplace. She tries to sabotage both the project and Moros and Elpis's they're-not-admitting-it's-a-crush situation. Moros and Elpis save the project, but he does storm off after thinking he was a project to Elpis. 

Elpis is called to Zeus's office and he grants her the role of spirit of hope. Ms. Hydra (the secretary) made a mistake and gave Elpis five classes when she was only supposed to be in ethicsology and then doing her hope bubble thing and making friends. Zeus is understanding about her being overloaded and making mistakes. She's given her new title, plus she can pick three morning classes, and then work on her hope stuff for the rest of the day. She's also given a new empty room, so she can escape Apate. 

Moros and Elpis make up and they're really cute. I think they might actually have jumped to second favorite couple after Hades and Persephone. They've got a great opposites attract banter thing going on. 

Athena and Aphrodite have slightly larger supporting roles, as does Hades. A lot of the other characters make typical appearances. 

I really enjoyed this one. Elpis is a fun character and I did like meeting a bunch of the spirits, although not all of them were necessary for the plot. It was a nice way to introduce a few more newbies before we end the series with the four goddesses it began with. 

Daughters of the Moon 2

Ah, Serena. 

I can't remember if she was my favorite first or Jimena. Possibly her because I loved her in the first book, while you barely saw Jimena.

Serena was always presented as the edgy one. She's got piercings in her nose, navel and tongue. This was a much bigger deal back in 2000, I assure you. She has dark, shorter hair that was red in the first book and now is growing out her usual dark shade but still tipped with red. Later in this book, she gets curly extensions, but they're still only shoulder-length. Her green eyes are mentioned as much as her tongue piercing. Heh. 

Vanessa is also described in this book, moreso than in her own. She's your typical blue-eyed blonde. 

Catty has brown eyes and curly brown hair. 

Jimena has black hair and dark eyes.

Antagonist Morgan is blonde. 

Essentially, they mostly look like their book models. 

Anyway, Serena the mind reader spends this entire book dealing with two Followers messing with her own mind. I'm not even pretending like I'm protecting you guys from spoilers. These are really old books. She's got a crush on a new boy at school named Zahi. Well, turns out he's a powerful Atrox Follower and he's trying to turn her to the dark side, so to speak. Working against him is Stanton, the blond bad boy from the first book, who genuinely cares for Serena. Get used to that because they're the bad boy and girl couple that lasts the entirety of this series. 

There are two things that really annoy me about this book. Aside from the typos and such I'm noticing more as someone much older than the target market. (Bolder instead of boulder not once but twice on the same page?) And that they act far older than fifteen.

First, there is absolutely zero backstory ever given about how Stanton and Serena became a couple. He says Zahi has been erasing all her memories of him, but it's never explained what those memories are. From his end, he was interested in her as soon as they mentally faced off in the first book, but we never hear how he got close enough to her to end up with them as a couple. It feels important, but like the author either couldn't figure out how to make it work or just plain didn't want to write it and in both cases, used the mindwipe as an excuse to not have to. It's lazy. I can't remember if it's gone into in future books. It's been so long since I read these last. If she does end up writing it, I'll note it in future reviews.

Second, there's a scene where Zahi and Serena are going to a rave. The setting is a nighttime rave on a California beach. I can't remember if they mentioned the time of year. It's not summer because school is on. One thing about this series is that there's a lot of outfit description. Serena is always well-dressed, though in an unusual and flashy style. Zahi's outfit descriptions were also more well-dressed than your typical teen guy. So what does she wear to this rave? Bright boas, wild makeup, fancy Docs and...sweats. And Zahi is in a sweatshirt and khakis or something. I've never been into rave culture, but I definitely don't think sweats are part of it. 

All the Daughters of the Moon are linked to Selene, but some of them have other goddess connections. Serena's is Hekate and her appearance was fun. 

I don't hate this one, but it's far from my favorite. Jimena was the highlight of the book, so I have a feeling this is where I started liking her more than Serena when I first read these. 

Daughters of the Moon 1

It's been almost 24 years since this book came out. I loved this series so much! I know I reread them a few years ago, but I've never done reviews for them here. I got the urge to reread yesterday, so here we are.

Daughters of the Moon was probably my first non-anime experience with magical girls. (I watched Sailor Moon on TV before each day of high school.)

I loved the idea of mixing Greek mythology with the magical girl badass squadron concept.

This book follows the first of the four main girls, Vanessa Cleveland. Vanessa has known she was different for years. She has the power to make herself invisible, though it's not as simple as most invisibility. It's like she pulls herself apart at a molecular level and can travel around that way. (Expect her to talk about her molecules a lot if you choose to read these.) She meets her best friend Catty at a young age, and a few years after becoming friends, Catty shows Vanessa her own power, which is to travel a day into the past or a day into the future. 

Vanessa is your typical blonde, popular, goody goody type. Everyone likes her because she's friendly and nice. Lots of guys have crushes on her. But she's not stuck up or really even that confident. She's very nervous about her power and what might happen if she gets too close to a guy. 

Vanessa has a few big worries going on.

First, she's caught the eye of her crush, Michael Saratoga. He asked her out. Can she even kiss him without going invisible out of nerves and excitement? The pair spend the entire book going back and forth on what exactly they're doing. Vanessa distances herself to not out her weird powers, while Michael sees this as her pulling away from him, so he's put off by her constant mixed messages. They work things out in the end and they're a cute couple, if I remember correctly. 

Second, Vanessa is convinced someone is following her and even coming into her bedroom.

Third, Catty disappears. Vanessa knows something happened to her when she was travelling back in time to investigate who was following Vanessa. 

Fourth, this new girl named Serena has been a little too interested in her. Vanessa finally gives in and goes with Serena and her best friend Jimena to meet the person that can help find Catty. Enter Maggie, who tells Vanessa that she's a goddess, a daughter of the moon. She explains about the ancient source of evil, called the Atrox, that's the enemy they'll be fighting the entire series. Vanessa is in disbelief. 

Fifth, Vanessa is dealing with a bad boy named Stanton, who says he and his fellow Followers (of the Atrox) have Catty. It's him that's been following Vanessa. Vanessa asks him how he became a Follower and he puts her into his memories so she can see for herself. She tries to save young Stanton in the memories and for that kind act, he can never harm her. He gives her a location to meet, but Maggie warns her it's too dangerous.

So of course, Vanessa decides to go and Catty is indeed there. The two girls fight off the Followers as best they can, but they're not doing that well until in strut Serena and Jimena. The four goddesses are able to hold off the Followers and escape. 

I've read this book several times over the many years it's been out and I think this is the time I've most liked Vanessa. I was always more of a Serena or Jimena girl until Tianna joined them in the fifth book and she was my fave for the rest of the series. Vanessa was always too timid for me, but I've grown to appreciate her. I'll be curious to see if my feelings on Catty have also changed. She was always my least favorite. 

It's good to be back in the DotM world! I even ordered the four Sisters of Isis books off Amazon. I lost mine in the hurricane. 

Julie & the Blue Guitar

American Girl is starting a graphic novel series called Mysteries Across Time! 

In the present, Emma finds Julie's journal in a thrift shop. She gets sucked into Julie's world and the mystery of the blue guitar. 

I liked Emma and lot and I've always loved Julie, but I was a little disappointed that we got a slightly changed version of Julie's silver guitar mystery instead of something new. 

But whatever! I'm nitpicking. I'm thrilled to have some new historical content from AG and the art was super cute. I hope to see many more of these and the new journal style series in the future. Don't just do the more modern girls, AG! 

The New Girl

Thank you, Amazon, for suggesting this to me. It was WONDERFUL.

Lia, her younger brother, and their parents are moving from Romania to Montreal. I honestly don't think it was ever clearly explained why. I assume it was job-related, but moving to a French-speaking city where the kids have to learn the new language the hard way has got to be a struggle. It certainly was for Lia. 

Lia is placed in a class with other new students from around the world, so we get girls from China and Poland and Sri Lanka and New York. 

After struggling a lot at first, Lia befriends some of these girls thanks to English, which she speaks better than French. There's an asshole boy from Romania who's a dick to her. I hate that kid. And she's got a cute little love interest. 

So Lia deals with language drama and friend drama and eventual boy drama, while also enduring the horrors of painful periods. Poor thing gets her first just as they're about to fly out of Romania! 

I love the art and all the characters. It's semi-autobiographical and I'm really hoping the author has more Lia stories for us soon.