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.