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lemonycocoa's review against another edition
3.0
If it weren't for Cassandra I would have liked this book a whole lot more. She is the quintessential bratty teenager. Every time she opened her mouth I rolled my eyes and couldn't wait for it to be over. Other than Cassandra the rest was an improvement on the previous book. We get to meet a couple more gods and hear about some others. I'm excited to find out about Odysseus and Achilles! Mortal Gods ended on a decent cliffhanger that left me looking forward to the next book. My only hope is that Cassandra grows up soon. She's driving me crazy.
foiltheplot's review against another edition
3.0
I feel like there was a lot of filler in this book, where most of the important action takes place in the beginning and the end. I am eager to see how events play out in the final book, especially after that killer ending.
tainted_words's review against another edition
5.0
read: 22:32
oooooh so that's how you're going to end the book?? not cool
second read finished: 10:30, March 13th 2016
oooooh so that's how you're going to end the book?? not cool
second read finished: 10:30, March 13th 2016
fairywine's review against another edition
3.0
I swear, there is just something about the Goddess War books that makes reading them such a uniquely tumultuous experience. For better and worse, this is a series that doesn’t do anything by halves.
The gods are readying themselves for the final battle, an all or nothing last stand. Sides are being chosen, the invincible Achilles is sought out, and mortals and gods alike prepare for the winner takes all fight. With the fragile alliance between the goddess Athena and reincarnated prophetess Cassandra barely holding, and secrets aplenty coming to light, even those tied to Fate itself can’t so how things will truly end…
Except for the part where they don’t because this book is essentially one big pause. I find it mystifying this one has a higher Goodreads rating than Antigoddess. Mortal Gods is a much weaker book and still has pretty much the same problem issues the first did. The fact that not much even really happens in Mortal Gods doesn’t help either.
Make no mistake, there are still a lot of great things in Mortal Gods. Athena is just as incredible as she was in Antigoddess. I think her character has deepened with her growing weakness, the conflict she faces, and her own emotional state. Odysseus and Hermes are likewise enjoyable, and get some pretty good moments together in Mortal Gods. It’s really fun to watch them just bounce off against each other.
Kendare Blake also brings in some new elements I really appreciated. When I learned Ares would be in Mortal Gods I hoped his character would be written with some nuance, instead of being given the dumb brute treatment like is usually done. I wasn’t disappointed. Though still a villain (who does some pretty horrible things), there a depth to Ares’ character that was so refreshing to see. There’s a point where he is actually the most stable and reasonable person on Hera’s side, and it’s believably done!
Even Hera gets some nice development there. It makes her seem more three dimensional even as she is doing unquestionably evil things. In her madness Aphrodite doesn’t get that much study, but her treatment is at least sympathetic.
The minor characters got a little more rounded as well. In Antigoddess I was pretty indifferent to Henry and Andie, but in Mortal Gods I found them much more engaging. They get some growth and actually add to the plot instead of hanging onto it like barnacles onto a ship.
Achilles was another appearance I was kind of leery of. Though I think the end of Mortal Gods rather fumbles with his character, I still like that the effort was made to have him be a little more substantial than just a blood hungry glory seeker. I just wish Blake hadn’t chosen to go in the direction she did with him-it felt to me like rather a waste of what she did accomplish with Achilles in the earlier parts of Mortal Gods. (Unless of course this is all groundwork for a massive upset in Ungodly, so I’ll semi-withhold judgment on that part for now).
The body horror aspect is pretty great in Mortal Gods too. (Kind of weird to think of that as a selling point, but it really does add to the ‘Twilight of the Gods’ atmosphere). We’ve already seen what Athena and the other gods who have appeared thus far experience, but there’s still plenty of creepiness to be had. Just try to read about Athena tearing feathers out from under her skin without wincing. Ares’ old wounds are opening up and bleeding out in a fitting end for the god of war. And what Blake ends up doing to the Moirae…that’s some high octane nightmare fuel right there.
So the above is all the good stuff-and I’d say it’s about as high quality as in Antigoddess. Then what makes Mortal Gods significantly weaker to me?
First of all, Mortal Gods suffers from Second Book Syndrome pretty hard. For a 300+ page book, there’s so little that happens to actually progress the plot. The human characters train and that’s…not terribly riveting for long. Every single thing Athena’s side attempts to do ends up going nowhere. We end Mortal Gods in pretty much the same position we ended Antigoddess. When you can literally skip an entire book and still pretty much be fine, it doesn’t speak highly of the story’s quality.
That’s strike one against Mortal Gods, and it’s a pretty significant one. Antigoddess had some very problematic elements for me, but one of the reasons I still rated it highly was the strength and life of the narrative. Mortal Gods doesn’t have that foundation, and the book as a whole rather sinks for it.
Strike two is the way this series in general and this book in particular handles the Persephone myth. In Antigoddess it really bothered me in the single mention she got largely because I ADORE the Persephone myth (one of my all-time favorites in Greek mythology) and I thought Blake’s take was a mistreatment.
Unfortunately, Mortal Gods dials things up from ‘mistreatment’ to ‘gruesome first degree homicide’. I can’t even begin to describe my frothing at the mouth rage at the “Hades likes my dead side best” bit. Thank you, Mortal Gods, for taking one of the most complex, thoughtful, and generally more benign of the Greek gods and reducing him to a necrophiliac. Thank. Fucking. You.
And why, AGAIN, do we have this need to cobble Norse myths onto Greek gods in something Frankenstein himself would find an affront against the laws of nature? Persephone is not Hel. It’s a disservice, a waste, and an insult to a pair of truly fascinating and distinct goddesses to join pieces of their legends together and hoping no one notices.
(“Seriously, they are not even remotely similar-”-me, screaming at the heavens until my throat goes raw.)
All this wouldn’t have been okay in the end, but the good elements would have sufficiently outweighed the bad for me like Antigoddess if it hadn’t been for strike three.
Cassandra. Just…Cassandra.
In Antigoddess I didn’t feel Cassandra was interesting enough to be a main protagonist, but I was otherwise fine if not indifferent to her. She was basically your typical YA surrogate, the bland and someone-special-even-though-she-is-just-a-normal-teen-like-the-teenagers-who-are-the-target-demographic-of-this-book type. Boring, but not the worst thing.
Here? I almost don’t even know where to begin with how utterly Cassandra fails to be compelling, likable, interesting or even move the plot forward in a meaningful way. The best way I can encapsulate how terrible a character Mortal Gods!Cassandra is? (Not terrible-evil, that might have been interesting. Terrible as in book-ruining). Here it is:
I think Bella Swan is a more defined, interesting, memorable, and rounded character than Cassandra Weaver.
And yes, that is one of the harshest literary insults I’m capable of throwing out. Because I have never, ever liked Twilight (a blight upon which YA and women’s literature still suffers the effects). As for Bella Swan-forget being a great character, she doesn’t even manage ‘decent’ or ‘microscopically likable’ for me.
Yet compared to Cassandra? At least Bella has interests, and goals (however singular and unhealthy) and a sense of initiative (a fragile one, but it exists). Bella’s awful, but it’s not because there’s nothing to her (still not all that much, but not zero). I know she likes 19th century English literature, I know she’s vegetarian, I know she did ballet as a girl but wasn’t good at it. I don’t support the nature of her relationship with Edward, but it can’t be said Bella doesn’t know what she wants or waits for it to come to her.
When I finished Mortal Gods and was mulling over what I thought of it, I realized something. Beyond her desire to ‘avenge’ Aiden, Cassandra has nothing. Nothing that characterizes her outside of her relationship with Aiden.
If you asked me to describe Cassandra-I literally couldn’t. I don’t know her hopes, her dreams, her hobbies, what motivates her-hell, I don’t even know her favorite food or movie. There’s a scene where Henry and Andie are talking in his bedroom and it’s mentioned he has an Avatar poster on his wall. It’s just a poster, but it tells the reader something about him (mainly that he likes movies that are not very good, preachy and vastly overrated). Henry’s a minor character, but this little line is more than we ever get for Cassandra.
We’re already in pretty bad place here considering the main character of the book has no identity. As for how Cassandra acts in Mortal Gods…
See the above? Switch Batman with Cassandra and Robin with you the reader. If you just replace “parents are” with “boyfriend is” you have about the gist of 70% of Cassandra’s dialogue and attitude in Mortal Gods. The other 30% is “KILL APHRODITE/ALL THE GODS BECAUSE MY BOYFRIEND IS DEADDDDDDDDDD!!!!” It’s tiresome and unengaging, especially when Cassandra’s behavior dial is set to about halfway between “surly brat” and “outright psychotic”.
(That’s not an exaggeration, by the way. There’s actually a part in Mortal Gods where Cassandra tries to kill Andie-her best friend-with her Fate powers for literally no reason. This in addition to basically wanting to murder every god 24/7 comes across like Cassandra’s sanity is rapidly fracturing. Somehow she still makes this BORING.)
And yet for all her talk and theocidal streak, Cassandra never DOES anything. She has about as much agency as one of those little dogs rich ladies carry around in purses. Cassandra is a large part of why Mortal Gods is so stagnant, being the protagonist. Forget moving the plot forward in a significant way-while everyone else is training or trying to be useful, all Cassandra does is stand around and go “MY BOYFRIEND IS DEADDDDDDDDDDDDDDD!!!!!”
Speaking of his Get-Thee-A-Restraining-Orderness, even dead Aiden still manages to drag Mortal Gods down. Though there were some clumsy or self-conflicting moments, Antigoddess at least knew he was a creepy stalker with a pretty face. To its detriment, Mortal Gods seems to have entirely forgotten this. There’s little to no acknowledgement of how unhealthy their relationship was, how Cassandra knew nothing and Aiden deliberately took advantage of her ignorance, or all the (many, many) other things that made their relationship so poisonous. That Mortal Gods takes the tack their ‘romance’ was of the “true love tragically torn apart” vein was appalling coming from otherwise very intelligent writing.
Examining all Cassandra’s flaws as a character is like going through a strata of fail (there are varying levels, each progressively worse), but here is where I say everything went wrong. Where if things had been done differently, Mortal Gods could have been just as “flawed but still really good” as Antigoddess.
Because there was so much rich material to be had with the Cassandra and Aiden scenario. Cassandra’s conflict over being betrayed by someone she loved and trusted would have been fascinating. Her wrestling with the hate of her past life and the broken trust of her current one would have been amazing. Or Cassandra moving on and finding a healthy relationship, learning how to love and trust all over again. Imagine if Cassandra had ended up starting a relationship with Achilles, for example. They’re both Weapons of Fate, and obviously have lots of bad blood from their past lives. But their current lives are a chance to start anew-maybe together they could have decided not to be dictated by the past, and move forward with the lives they’ve been given. Or hell, have Cassandra stay single, having gone through the crucible to become a strong hearted woman who will only accept a relationship when she’s ready for one and on terms that respect her as a person.
I would have enjoyed reading any of these. What I got was a personality-less protagonist who actually regressed since the first book.
This is all coming down hard on Mortal Gods-I’m well aware of that. But it is because the writing is so smart and aware otherwise, because I know this book can and has been capable of so much more. Kendare Blake clearly knows how to write a god-human relationship with baggage well. Just look at Athena and Odysseus. Even though Athena’s a virgin goddess I still found the progression and emotions engaging and believable. But there’s someone about Cassandra that sucks all that intelligence and life away from the story, like a black hole made of pure fail.
Antigoddess was great to me because the good elements were so good it managed to rise far above some pretty problematic bad ones. Not only did Mortal Gods waste a great chance to work on its problem spots, it instead kept them, added new ones, and didn’t have strong enough good elements to lift itself up.
To be blunt, Mortal Gods was a disappointment. It had elements I liked, and I’m still going to read the final book. Hell, even with all my critiques I still gave it three stars. But when I think of what Mortal Gods could have been, and look at what I got instead…that’s the very definition of a letdown.
The gods are readying themselves for the final battle, an all or nothing last stand. Sides are being chosen, the invincible Achilles is sought out, and mortals and gods alike prepare for the winner takes all fight. With the fragile alliance between the goddess Athena and reincarnated prophetess Cassandra barely holding, and secrets aplenty coming to light, even those tied to Fate itself can’t so how things will truly end…
Except for the part where they don’t because this book is essentially one big pause. I find it mystifying this one has a higher Goodreads rating than Antigoddess. Mortal Gods is a much weaker book and still has pretty much the same problem issues the first did. The fact that not much even really happens in Mortal Gods doesn’t help either.
Make no mistake, there are still a lot of great things in Mortal Gods. Athena is just as incredible as she was in Antigoddess. I think her character has deepened with her growing weakness, the conflict she faces, and her own emotional state. Odysseus and Hermes are likewise enjoyable, and get some pretty good moments together in Mortal Gods. It’s really fun to watch them just bounce off against each other.
Kendare Blake also brings in some new elements I really appreciated. When I learned Ares would be in Mortal Gods I hoped his character would be written with some nuance, instead of being given the dumb brute treatment like is usually done. I wasn’t disappointed. Though still a villain (who does some pretty horrible things), there a depth to Ares’ character that was so refreshing to see. There’s a point where he is actually the most stable and reasonable person on Hera’s side, and it’s believably done!
Even Hera gets some nice development there. It makes her seem more three dimensional even as she is doing unquestionably evil things. In her madness Aphrodite doesn’t get that much study, but her treatment is at least sympathetic.
The minor characters got a little more rounded as well. In Antigoddess I was pretty indifferent to Henry and Andie, but in Mortal Gods I found them much more engaging. They get some growth and actually add to the plot instead of hanging onto it like barnacles onto a ship.
Achilles was another appearance I was kind of leery of. Though I think the end of Mortal Gods rather fumbles with his character, I still like that the effort was made to have him be a little more substantial than just a blood hungry glory seeker. I just wish Blake hadn’t chosen to go in the direction she did with him-it felt to me like rather a waste of what she did accomplish with Achilles in the earlier parts of Mortal Gods. (Unless of course this is all groundwork for a massive upset in Ungodly, so I’ll semi-withhold judgment on that part for now).
The body horror aspect is pretty great in Mortal Gods too. (Kind of weird to think of that as a selling point, but it really does add to the ‘Twilight of the Gods’ atmosphere). We’ve already seen what Athena and the other gods who have appeared thus far experience, but there’s still plenty of creepiness to be had. Just try to read about Athena tearing feathers out from under her skin without wincing. Ares’ old wounds are opening up and bleeding out in a fitting end for the god of war. And what Blake ends up doing to the Moirae…that’s some high octane nightmare fuel right there.
So the above is all the good stuff-and I’d say it’s about as high quality as in Antigoddess. Then what makes Mortal Gods significantly weaker to me?
First of all, Mortal Gods suffers from Second Book Syndrome pretty hard. For a 300+ page book, there’s so little that happens to actually progress the plot. The human characters train and that’s…not terribly riveting for long. Every single thing Athena’s side attempts to do ends up going nowhere. We end Mortal Gods in pretty much the same position we ended Antigoddess. When you can literally skip an entire book and still pretty much be fine, it doesn’t speak highly of the story’s quality.
That’s strike one against Mortal Gods, and it’s a pretty significant one. Antigoddess had some very problematic elements for me, but one of the reasons I still rated it highly was the strength and life of the narrative. Mortal Gods doesn’t have that foundation, and the book as a whole rather sinks for it.
Strike two is the way this series in general and this book in particular handles the Persephone myth. In Antigoddess it really bothered me in the single mention she got largely because I ADORE the Persephone myth (one of my all-time favorites in Greek mythology) and I thought Blake’s take was a mistreatment.
Unfortunately, Mortal Gods dials things up from ‘mistreatment’ to ‘gruesome first degree homicide’. I can’t even begin to describe my frothing at the mouth rage at the “Hades likes my dead side best” bit. Thank you, Mortal Gods, for taking one of the most complex, thoughtful, and generally more benign of the Greek gods and reducing him to a necrophiliac. Thank. Fucking. You.
And why, AGAIN, do we have this need to cobble Norse myths onto Greek gods in something Frankenstein himself would find an affront against the laws of nature? Persephone is not Hel. It’s a disservice, a waste, and an insult to a pair of truly fascinating and distinct goddesses to join pieces of their legends together and hoping no one notices.
(“Seriously, they are not even remotely similar-”-me, screaming at the heavens until my throat goes raw.)
All this wouldn’t have been okay in the end, but the good elements would have sufficiently outweighed the bad for me like Antigoddess if it hadn’t been for strike three.
Cassandra. Just…Cassandra.
In Antigoddess I didn’t feel Cassandra was interesting enough to be a main protagonist, but I was otherwise fine if not indifferent to her. She was basically your typical YA surrogate, the bland and someone-special-even-though-she-is-just-a-normal-teen-like-the-teenagers-who-are-the-target-demographic-of-this-book type. Boring, but not the worst thing.
Here? I almost don’t even know where to begin with how utterly Cassandra fails to be compelling, likable, interesting or even move the plot forward in a meaningful way. The best way I can encapsulate how terrible a character Mortal Gods!Cassandra is? (Not terrible-evil, that might have been interesting. Terrible as in book-ruining). Here it is:
I think Bella Swan is a more defined, interesting, memorable, and rounded character than Cassandra Weaver.
And yes, that is one of the harshest literary insults I’m capable of throwing out. Because I have never, ever liked Twilight (a blight upon which YA and women’s literature still suffers the effects). As for Bella Swan-forget being a great character, she doesn’t even manage ‘decent’ or ‘microscopically likable’ for me.
Yet compared to Cassandra? At least Bella has interests, and goals (however singular and unhealthy) and a sense of initiative (a fragile one, but it exists). Bella’s awful, but it’s not because there’s nothing to her (still not all that much, but not zero). I know she likes 19th century English literature, I know she’s vegetarian, I know she did ballet as a girl but wasn’t good at it. I don’t support the nature of her relationship with Edward, but it can’t be said Bella doesn’t know what she wants or waits for it to come to her.
When I finished Mortal Gods and was mulling over what I thought of it, I realized something. Beyond her desire to ‘avenge’ Aiden, Cassandra has nothing. Nothing that characterizes her outside of her relationship with Aiden.
If you asked me to describe Cassandra-I literally couldn’t. I don’t know her hopes, her dreams, her hobbies, what motivates her-hell, I don’t even know her favorite food or movie. There’s a scene where Henry and Andie are talking in his bedroom and it’s mentioned he has an Avatar poster on his wall. It’s just a poster, but it tells the reader something about him (mainly that he likes movies that are not very good, preachy and vastly overrated). Henry’s a minor character, but this little line is more than we ever get for Cassandra.
We’re already in pretty bad place here considering the main character of the book has no identity. As for how Cassandra acts in Mortal Gods…
See the above? Switch Batman with Cassandra and Robin with you the reader. If you just replace “parents are” with “boyfriend is” you have about the gist of 70% of Cassandra’s dialogue and attitude in Mortal Gods. The other 30% is “KILL APHRODITE/ALL THE GODS BECAUSE MY BOYFRIEND IS DEADDDDDDDDDD!!!!” It’s tiresome and unengaging, especially when Cassandra’s behavior dial is set to about halfway between “surly brat” and “outright psychotic”.
(That’s not an exaggeration, by the way. There’s actually a part in Mortal Gods where Cassandra tries to kill Andie-her best friend-with her Fate powers for literally no reason. This in addition to basically wanting to murder every god 24/7 comes across like Cassandra’s sanity is rapidly fracturing. Somehow she still makes this BORING.)
And yet for all her talk and theocidal streak, Cassandra never DOES anything. She has about as much agency as one of those little dogs rich ladies carry around in purses. Cassandra is a large part of why Mortal Gods is so stagnant, being the protagonist. Forget moving the plot forward in a significant way-while everyone else is training or trying to be useful, all Cassandra does is stand around and go “MY BOYFRIEND IS DEADDDDDDDDDDDDDDD!!!!!”
Speaking of his Get-Thee-A-Restraining-Orderness, even dead Aiden still manages to drag Mortal Gods down. Though there were some clumsy or self-conflicting moments, Antigoddess at least knew he was a creepy stalker with a pretty face. To its detriment, Mortal Gods seems to have entirely forgotten this. There’s little to no acknowledgement of how unhealthy their relationship was, how Cassandra knew nothing and Aiden deliberately took advantage of her ignorance, or all the (many, many) other things that made their relationship so poisonous. That Mortal Gods takes the tack their ‘romance’ was of the “true love tragically torn apart” vein was appalling coming from otherwise very intelligent writing.
Examining all Cassandra’s flaws as a character is like going through a strata of fail (there are varying levels, each progressively worse), but here is where I say everything went wrong. Where if things had been done differently, Mortal Gods could have been just as “flawed but still really good” as Antigoddess.
Because there was so much rich material to be had with the Cassandra and Aiden scenario. Cassandra’s conflict over being betrayed by someone she loved and trusted would have been fascinating. Her wrestling with the hate of her past life and the broken trust of her current one would have been amazing. Or Cassandra moving on and finding a healthy relationship, learning how to love and trust all over again. Imagine if Cassandra had ended up starting a relationship with Achilles, for example. They’re both Weapons of Fate, and obviously have lots of bad blood from their past lives. But their current lives are a chance to start anew-maybe together they could have decided not to be dictated by the past, and move forward with the lives they’ve been given. Or hell, have Cassandra stay single, having gone through the crucible to become a strong hearted woman who will only accept a relationship when she’s ready for one and on terms that respect her as a person.
I would have enjoyed reading any of these. What I got was a personality-less protagonist who actually regressed since the first book.
This is all coming down hard on Mortal Gods-I’m well aware of that. But it is because the writing is so smart and aware otherwise, because I know this book can and has been capable of so much more. Kendare Blake clearly knows how to write a god-human relationship with baggage well. Just look at Athena and Odysseus. Even though Athena’s a virgin goddess I still found the progression and emotions engaging and believable. But there’s someone about Cassandra that sucks all that intelligence and life away from the story, like a black hole made of pure fail.
Antigoddess was great to me because the good elements were so good it managed to rise far above some pretty problematic bad ones. Not only did Mortal Gods waste a great chance to work on its problem spots, it instead kept them, added new ones, and didn’t have strong enough good elements to lift itself up.
To be blunt, Mortal Gods was a disappointment. It had elements I liked, and I’m still going to read the final book. Hell, even with all my critiques I still gave it three stars. But when I think of what Mortal Gods could have been, and look at what I got instead…that’s the very definition of a letdown.
kkick317's review against another edition
4.0
Listen, I low-key think my issue with this is that I dislike Athena and Apollo from other myths and retellings
tacochelle's review against another edition
3.0
A lot of the same as the last book. When it's focused on the horror, the gods versus gods, it really good. When it's turns to teen angst and drama, the story drags. This time, it's more training the mortals for fighting the gods and their minions, what little they can do, and while the train they bicker. It gets old fast.
mary_r_m's review against another edition
3.0
I liked the updated take on the Greek Gods. I think I would have enjoyed it a bit more if I had read book one first.
shadowcas's review against another edition
3.0
Obviously, if you have not read the first novel, Antigoddess, then I must warn you that there will be spoilers from the first book in this review. Possibly. I don’t know.
I’ll preface this review by stating that I liked Mortal Gods by Kendare Blake. To me, the most characters were fleshed out and seemed real enough to form a connection with for some. That being said, Athena is not a love sick teenager; I couldn’t take her at all in this. I don’t require keeping a story (or mythology) as true to the original as possible. Retellings and reimaginings were meant to be tweaked and changed. But Athena was the virgin goddess of wisdom, courage, law and justice, war, mathematics, etc. She was slow to anger and never fought without a cause. So imagine a goddess who is jealous and petty and gaga over Odysseus. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m sure Ody is worth it but really?
And then you have Cassandra, Princess of Troy, Prophetess, reborn in modern day America, who has absolutely no control over her emotions or her god-killing powers. She’s consistently telling herself she hates Athena, but she doesn’t want to hurt Athena. Of course, then she turns around and hurts Athena and wants to kill Athena.
I loved Antigoddess. But this just came off as such a personality shift from most of the main characters that it’s making my head spin.
I’ll definitely read the final book in the trilogy, if only to find out the ultimate ending, but Mortal Gods only hit 3 stars for me this go around.
There is more action in this one than there was in the first novel. I guess I should add that one.
I’ll preface this review by stating that I liked Mortal Gods by Kendare Blake. To me, the most characters were fleshed out and seemed real enough to form a connection with for some. That being said, Athena is not a love sick teenager; I couldn’t take her at all in this. I don’t require keeping a story (or mythology) as true to the original as possible. Retellings and reimaginings were meant to be tweaked and changed. But Athena was the virgin goddess of wisdom, courage, law and justice, war, mathematics, etc. She was slow to anger and never fought without a cause. So imagine a goddess who is jealous and petty and gaga over Odysseus. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m sure Ody is worth it but really?
And then you have Cassandra, Princess of Troy, Prophetess, reborn in modern day America, who has absolutely no control over her emotions or her god-killing powers. She’s consistently telling herself she hates Athena, but she doesn’t want to hurt Athena. Of course, then she turns around and hurts Athena and wants to kill Athena.
I loved Antigoddess. But this just came off as such a personality shift from most of the main characters that it’s making my head spin.
I’ll definitely read the final book in the trilogy, if only to find out the ultimate ending, but Mortal Gods only hit 3 stars for me this go around.
There is more action in this one than there was in the first novel. I guess I should add that one.