REREAD REVIEW: Goddess Girls 1

UK cover

I decided to reread the entire Goddess Girls series. Thunder Girls gave me the mythology itch and instead of just reading the two GGs that I was behind on, I decided "Let's redo them all!" There are several where I can't remember what happened, so it seemed like a good idea.

I looked back on my original review for Athena the Brain and was disappointed to see I'd written so little on it. I don't plan on doing these secondary reviews for all the books, but only as necessary.

As always, I need to mention the First Rule of Goddess Girls: DO NOT EXPECT ACCURATE GREEK MYTHOLOGY.

Instead of rehashing the American covers, I thought it would be fun to sprinkle in some of the international versions. Sadly, there aren't many! But what there is are pretty cool.

Hebrew language edition

Athena the Brain is less a solid story on its own and more of a world-building exercise. You meet all the main characters. Athena, Persephone, Aphrodite and Artemis are the four main Goddess Girls. Medusa is set up as the antagonist. Poseidon is there on the boy end of things. Dionysus gets a brief mention, but I don't recall any other boys. You meet Principal Zeus, some of the staff and a couple teachers. You see how the school functions. That's the meat of the story.

Little mythology Easter Eggs are scattered through. The biggest one is that Athena's best friend is named Pallas. Pallas was a daughter of Triton. The girls were raised together (as in the book, though there's no mention of Triton) and Athena accidentally killed Pallas in an athletic competition (thanks to Zeus's intervention). Hence her being called Pallas Athena sometimes. 

German cover

Also amusing is that Athena still is the one who transforms Medusa and gives her her stone powers. All three Gorgon sisters attend the school, but only Stheno and Euryale are immortal. Medusa's mortal. All three have green skin and hair so dark green that it's almost black. Medusa steals an invention of Athena's that should have been called Snarkypoo. It's shampoo that stops bullying. But Athena accidentally spelled it Snakeypoo and...yep, Medusa's hair turned to snakes and she got her stone powers. 

There's one reason I wanted to write this review. I was annoyed at past me for not going into detail on this, but the book's main flaw for me is the handling of the Trojan War. The characters in Hero-ology class are each given a figure representing a human. Then they manipulate their humans, each guiding them in certain ways. After a short time, the Trojan War happens. However, it occurs in the span of two days.

Indonesian cover (I love this one!)

Rather famously, the Trojan War last TEN YEARS. And there's not some sort of wonky time thing going on. It isn't magically ten years passing on Earth while it's two days on Olympus. Because not long after this, Athena wins the invention competition and one of her rewards is her friend Pallas coming for a visit. Pallas, who is definitely not suddenly ten years older.

I don't mind a lot of the changes they make to the original myths, but turning the Trojan War into a class exercise and shrinking it down to only two days is not exactly one of my favorite choices that they made. I can't remember off the top of my head if Cassandra says anything about the length of the war in her book. I'll have to remember to keep an eye out for it once I make it that far. 

So yeah, there you have it. Some new comments on an old fave. I really do love this series, so I'm looking forward to a refresher on all of them.