Stars: I did not want to put it down and go to work (AKA 4/5)
Blurb: The Goddess War begins in Antigoddess, the first installment of the new series by acclaimed author of Anna Dressed in Blood, Kendare Blake.
Old Gods never die…
Or so Athena thought. But then the feathers started sprouting beneath her skin, invading her lungs like a strange cancer, and Hermes showed up with a fever eating away his flesh. So much for living a quiet eternity in perpetual health.
Desperately seeking the cause of their slow, miserable deaths, Athena and Hermes travel the world, gathering allies and discovering enemies both new and old. Their search leads them to Cassandra—an ordinary girl who was once an extraordinary prophetess, protected and loved by a god.
These days, Cassandra doesn’t involve herself in the business of gods—in fact, she doesn’t even know they exist. But she could be the key in a war that is only just beginning.
Because Hera, the queen of the gods, has aligned herself with other of the ancient Olympians, who are killing off rivals in an attempt to prolong their own lives. But these anti-gods have become corrupted in their desperation to survive, horrific caricatures of their former glory. Athena will need every advantage she can get, because immortals don’t just flicker out.
Every one of them dies in their own way. Some choke on feathers. Others become monsters. All of them rage against their last breath.
The Goddess War is about to begin.
This book was an unexpected surprise, to say the least. I started reading it because it features the Greek gods and it was something different to vampires and the like that I tend to come across in the urban fantasy genre.
But, looking at the blurb and the cover, I admit I judged it by some other conventions of the genre, in particular – the romance. I expected a too-sweet, soulmates sort of romance, and it did deliver, but, still managed to surprise me. This is a tale of the Greek gods filled with tragedy and pain, and Blake doesn’t pull any punches.
Cassandra is a teenager, who just happens to be psychic. She’s doing well at school, she and her boyfriend, Aidan, are making plans for the future and she’s happy. She knows she’ll lose her powers after she turns 18, but with Aidan she thinks that future might be something she can handle.
Then, she meets Athena, Hermes and Odysseus and realises that the Greek gods, are real, and that she’s the pawn in a war she didn’t know was going on. And if that’s not enough, she and those closest to her are reincarnated versions of Cassandra, Hector and Andromache of Troy.
Athena and Hermes and every other God are dying in painful ways. In a search for answers they discover that Cassandra is going to tip the balance in the war one way or another.
Blake is marvelous at worldbuilding – there’s the world of the gods, of impossible things that happen, and the mundane of “our” world, where they have to worry about having enough cash and hitchhiking. The characters straddle both worlds effortlessly, a strength of Blake’s writing, as is the fact that they struggle and have to be concerned with very human things, despite their otherworldliness.
If anything, this is Athena and Hermes book. They’re siblings, watching each other die, but they’re thousands of years old and overt familial love isn’t high on their agenda. They’re the ones that begin to put the threads of everything together, and finding Cassandra is at first nothing more than self-preservation. What is fascinating to follow is that they’re learning what it means to be vulnerable, even as they’re trying their best to hold on to the things that make them immortal.
Cassandra is fairly conventional until half-way through the book. Sure, she’s psychic but it’s when she and Athena and Hermes collide, that she truly comes to life in the story. But, what got me excited about it was what Blake did to Aidan – she killed him off. It’s not often that happens in the stories I read, so it was an unexpected surprise (then a line in book 2 happened) and made me salivate for book 2, and what that meant for Cassandra. Aidan was a fairly flat character, and he made Cassandra fair unremarkable as a result. Sure, they’re made for each other in the book, but honestly, they don’t make for a good read (no matter who he turns out to be).
Blake is skilled at maintain the tension between the two POVs that are playing out in the book – Athena’s and Cassandra’s. She never lets up in each section, managing to keep things going at a brisk, tense pace that sets up the two sides of the war to meet in the first battle of this war. Then, it’s revealed that Cassandra is very much the antigoddess, much like the gods’ antimatter, I think.
The book sets up a series of fabulous potential, and I’ve already stared book 2 as a result. I have to admit, something did give me pause in book 2, which has me a little anxious for what’s coming up in it, but I’ll keep you posted on that!
