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Every seven years, the Agon begins. As punishment for a past rebellion, nine Greek gods are forced to walk the earth as mortals, hunted by the descendants of ancient bloodlines, all eager to kill a god and seize their divine power and immortality.
Long ago, Lore Perseous fled that brutal world in the wake of her family’s sadistic murder by a rival line, turning her back on the hunt’s promises of eternal glory. For years she’s pushed away any thought of revenge against the man–now a god–responsible for their deaths.
Yet as the next hunt dawns over New York City, two participants seek out her help: Castor, a childhood friend of Lore believed long dead, and a gravely wounded Athena, among the last of the original gods.
The goddess offers an alliance against their mutual enemy and, at last, a way for Lore to leave the Agon behind forever. But Lore’s decision to bind her fate to Athena’s and rejoin the hunt will come at a deadly cost–and still may not be enough to stop the rise of a new god with the power to bring humanity to its knees. 

It’s time for another review where I get confused about Greek Mythology! I think at this point I need to face the fact that I probably need to teach myself a little bit before reading more Greek Mythology inspired books, purely because this is the second book I’ve read in 2021 that I have been highly confused over (the first being Circe). I thought with this one being a YA book rather than adult it may have held my hand a little more, but it did still leave me feeling confused.

I feel like I left this book with not much more knowledge than when I went in, honestly. I really liked the idea of this book and the premise sounded brilliant – it sounds like it should have been fast paced and action packed. Instead, I found this boring and confusing at the same time. It took me so much longer to get through than I wanted to because it just felt so long and I didn’t want to pick it up when I wasn’t reading it.

I was born knowing how to do three things –

I liked the characters and the kind of found family element to it, but I didn’t feel connected to them at all. They all felt a little flat and I couldn’t tell you any defining feature about any of the characters less than a week after finishing this book. The plot also felt super slow even though technically a lot happens, I couldn’t pinpoint anything in partiular.

I know that part of my problem with this book was my lack of understanding of Greek Mythology, but I feel like I can’t blame everything on myself here. Partly because there were sections of this book (namely the flashbacks) that I actually really enjoyed. I’m so glad I enjoyed these parts because I do have hope for Alexandra Bracken’s writing. These sections personally felt so different to the rest of the book and I felt so much more connected to them.

how to breathe, how to dream, and how to love you.

It’s really hard to tell how much of this book’s problems is mine and how much is the book, but I really want to read the Passenger series by the same author so it will be interesting to see how I find that one!

★★★
2.5 out of 5 stars

-Beth

May your shelves forever overflow with books! ☽

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