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verypeculiarpages's review against another edition
4.0
AGH. I JUST finished this and I’m in SHOCK so I’m not sure how put together this review is gonna be buuuuut-
SPOILERS- but WHAT THE FRESH F*%K ACHILLES! *insert the Tyra Banks ‘we were rooting for you we were all rooting for you’ gif* I started getting the feeling he would betray them towards the end but like THAT?! OH MAN.
I’m just- Odysseus CANT be dead. Athena, Hermes & Odysseus are literally the only people I NEED to survive this series. (Achilles was on that list but EFF THAT NOW)
Aside from that absolute mindfu*k of an ending, I enjoyed this book a lot. It’s surprising how much I’ve enjoyed the series thus far considering the fact that I HATE CASSANDRA. OH MY GOD. She is SO whiny and ungrateful and is absolutely unfairly rude to Athena. God. I do not like her AT ALL.
Reading over a couple other reviews, I can see how some people were disappointed with this book. Not much happened and we really didn’t get any answers about wtf is going on. ALSO, what a DISAPPOINTMENT that they finally got to the underworld and Hades wasn’t even frickin there. BUT, I enjoy Athena & Hermes so much that I guess I look past it.
Welp, one more book in this series to decide whether or not I want to sit a corner and cry and rue the day I ever picked up Antigoddess (pls don’t make me rue the day)
SPOILERS- but WHAT THE FRESH F*%K ACHILLES! *insert the Tyra Banks ‘we were rooting for you we were all rooting for you’ gif* I started getting the feeling he would betray them towards the end but like THAT?! OH MAN.
I’m just- Odysseus CANT be dead. Athena, Hermes & Odysseus are literally the only people I NEED to survive this series. (Achilles was on that list but EFF THAT NOW)
Aside from that absolute mindfu*k of an ending, I enjoyed this book a lot. It’s surprising how much I’ve enjoyed the series thus far considering the fact that I HATE CASSANDRA. OH MY GOD. She is SO whiny and ungrateful and is absolutely unfairly rude to Athena. God. I do not like her AT ALL.
Reading over a couple other reviews, I can see how some people were disappointed with this book. Not much happened and we really didn’t get any answers about wtf is going on. ALSO, what a DISAPPOINTMENT that they finally got to the underworld and Hades wasn’t even frickin there. BUT, I enjoy Athena & Hermes so much that I guess I look past it.
Welp, one more book in this series to decide whether or not I want to sit a corner and cry and rue the day I ever picked up Antigoddess (pls don’t make me rue the day)
rdyourbookcase's review against another edition
1.0
I’d recommend this series to other people because Kendare Blake is a great writer. They just aren’t my favorites, though. More Anna books, please!
shespeakslyrics's review against another edition
4.0
Really enjoying this series. Have loved all of Kendare Blake's works. Such an original take on the God's final days.
thepiqht's review against another edition
5.0
Book: Mortal Gods
Author: Kendare Blake
Source: Library
Hermes;
Honestly my favourite character in the book, despite quickly deteriorating he manages to stay upbeat, heartbreaking in its own right. The sister-brother relationship between him and Athena has been made a lot clearer, explaining Athena's outburst when things aren't going fast enough. She needs to save her little brother.
Athena and Odysseus;
Didn't like this relationship in the first book and I don't like it now, although it isn't too bad that you can't read the book. What bothers me about this is that I like both of the individual characters, they just don't go together very well.
Achilles;
The second weapon. Cocky, good looking and full with unquenched anger. What could go wrong?
Hera, Aphrodite and Ares;
In this book we got to see more of the behind the scenes, what goes on in the circle of 'villains'. This makes the story more well rounded and enjoyable to read. It gives us a better insight to their motivation; to live, to be with their love; to stop feeling helpless.
Author: Kendare Blake
Source: Library
Hermes;
Honestly my favourite character in the book, despite quickly deteriorating he manages to stay upbeat, heartbreaking in its own right. The sister-brother relationship between him and Athena has been made a lot clearer, explaining Athena's outburst when things aren't going fast enough. She needs to save her little brother.
Athena and Odysseus;
Didn't like this relationship in the first book and I don't like it now, although it isn't too bad that you can't read the book. What bothers me about this is that I like both of the individual characters, they just don't go together very well.
Spoiler
Calypso seems like an amazing person, she has my vote any day.Achilles;
The second weapon. Cocky, good looking and full with unquenched anger. What could go wrong?
Spoiler
everything.Hera, Aphrodite and Ares;
In this book we got to see more of the behind the scenes, what goes on in the circle of 'villains'. This makes the story more well rounded and enjoyable to read. It gives us a better insight to their motivation; to live, to be with their love; to stop feeling helpless.
bookslucyking's review against another edition
4.0
I could NOT stand Cassandra in this one. She was soo annoying, angry, acting bat-crazy all the time, she was insane, one would think that Athena will be the crazy, angry one but nope, I hated everytime Cassandra appeared in the book, I really liked her in the first book but the change here is horrible.
On the other hand, I really enjoyed everyone else, Athena and Hermes, Athena and Oddyseus, Henri and Andie, even the bad guys scenes were interesting. It could have more action or more of a storyline but in the end it was great book and I cannot wait for the last book to see how this ends.
But please, Cassandra, change your attitude at least a bit, will you?
On the other hand, I really enjoyed everyone else, Athena and Hermes, Athena and Oddyseus, Henri and Andie, even the bad guys scenes were interesting. It could have more action or more of a storyline but in the end it was great book and I cannot wait for the last book to see how this ends.
But please, Cassandra, change your attitude at least a bit, will you?
reixx's review against another edition
5.0
khit sobra akong nabbwisit si Cassandra naliligtas ako ni Athena at ung nangyari waaaaaaaaaaaaaa omg Ody 3
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.
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.