Hello everyone!
At this point in time, my love for Greek Mythology is probably not such a well-known fact, despite me actually adoring it more than I adore a lot of things in the long run. The thing is, however, that I haven't had much interest in books about it for a while, that is until I randomly stumbled over one that caught my interest and wouldn't let go.
I can't even say just WHY it happened - though probably it was Bookbub telling me the book was being offered for a low price on Kobo.
I'm talking about Kailtin Bevis's Persephone.
Now, I have already shown in the past that I have this thing for mythology and retellings (can anyone say Percy Jackson with me?), so I was really excited for this. You have to be a total geek to understand my geekiness, but I also needed something to tide me over while I'm hunting for the latest Alison Weir book about Anne Boleyn.
In any event, however, yesterday was spent mostly by sticking my nose into the pages of this book and not looking up until I was done.
Now, as the title says, this is a Persephone and Hades retelling. According to the legends, Persephone, the beautiful daughter of Demeter, was abducted by Hades, who saw her and coveted her, and transported to the Underworld, the realm her new husband presided over (oh yeah, he totally married her on the spot, don't you know). The problem was that initially, Persephone equally feared and loathed her husband, wanted to return topside, and also Demeter was going insane up on top trying to find her pretty daughter. In the end, she went so far to announce there would be no more life and growing things until Persephone was returned to her.
Naturally, there are no secrets among the gods, so obviously EVERYONE quickly knew just where Persephone was, and with who.
Eventually, when things on Earth got dire, Zeus sent Hermes as a messenger to Hades to release Persephone and return her to her mother.
The problem NOW was that Persephone had fallen in love with her husband by this point, and had eaten at his table, which meant that by consuming food from the Underground she was now bound to him more fully than with marriage (those Greek gods never really respected marriages anyway). The problem was solved neatly enough: Persephone had eaten pomegranate seeds (namely, three of them), which meant she would remain with her husband for three months each year, then be topside with her mother for the remaining nine.
And so, kids, were the seasons explained by the ancient Greeks, because Demeter went on a sulk every time her daughter went underground, thus starting winter.
In this retelling, however, Persephone is a student in Athens, Georgia, with weird things happening to her a sshe hits sixteen. When she's very nearly abducted, her mother confesses that she's a goddess, Persephone, and that for some reason no one understands, Boreas, the God of Northern Winds, wants her.
Quick Boreas tip: the guy wanted a mortal girl once, too, kidnapped her, and by the time he was done with her she was beyond any kind of salvation besides removing her memory completely.
Anyway, mid-abduction by Boreas, Hades comes to the rescue and spirits Persephone to the Underworld, where she will be safe and protected as his Queen, not that their marriage will be the way a marriage should be. And in any event, teenage Persephone is soon too busy with redecorating her room and getting clothes and mani-pedis.
She meets Cassandra and Helen (yes, THOSE), and sits in that time of the week when Hades holds court for the newly arrived souls, slowly coming to learn more about the Underworld and about her husband.
She also can't decide whether he likes her or not, but that's beside the point.
Hades helps start her on some basic things Demeter kept from her to make sure she could blend in with humans, like learning about divine history, and her own powers, but there's a tiny hitch in the book here: the readers never truly get an explanations about just WHAT her powers are, besides charming people and making plants grow.
Thanatos, the God of Death, is assigned to her as bodyguard, but he's kind of not effective enough since, after a tiff with Hades, the teenager gets sucked to the other side of Tartarus and almost pretty badly hurt, if not for Hades being at the right place at the right time, again, saving her and bringing her back to the palace.
Boreas, however, hasn't given up yet, and kidnapps Melissa, who is Persephone's best friend and also her priestess, and of course Persephone wants to run in head-first to save her.
Which is exactly what she does, against all advice, and somehow manages to overpower Boreas and killing him, but not before he explains that, against all odds, Zeus, her father, is alive, and wants to get Persephone to come to him.
Not that she wants to - she kind of wants to see where this with Hades will lead, not to mention she also realises Thanatos had sworn allegiance to Zeus, meaning that he's working against Hades and has been this whole time, but as gods can't lie, Persephone ridiculously promises she won't tell anyone she can charm him (as Zeus's descendant, she's dangerous to anyone who is somehow connected to Zeus). So, now she knows, but can't say anything. Hades doesn't know, and wants to make sure he doesn't do anything with Persephone since she's pretty much a baby to him even though he loves her.
And I'm sitting here scratching my head thinking how on Earth did Hades fall in love with this teenage brat who appeared so clumsy and inept and then miraculously turned into a Deus ex Machina by the end of the book?
There was very little to endear Persephone to the reader, and the romance was certainly underdone and underwhelming, seeing as there's no way a grown man would find her attractive in an instant like that, especially since there was NOTHING special in that moment when Hades lays eyes on her. The book, while entertaining, moved at a fast pace that sometimes didn't give readers time enough to breathe and figure out what was happening, and while we got to see the beginnings of Persephone's lessons a lot of the time, we didn't see more which means that by the end, I was just confused as to how she got to this point with her powers.
All in all, it was lacking, if entertaining, and I'm hopeful this all improves with latter books, so I'm sticking with this Daughters of Zeus series for now!
xx
*image not mine
No comments:
Post a Comment