MY ⭐️ RATING: 3.5/5
Format: Kindle Whispersync
BOOK DESCRIPTION
My mother told me that men would speak about the Golden Age as a time of peace and happiness for all… However, the women of our age would tell a very different story…
Cronus, God of Gods, whose inheritance is the world. Among his possessions: women, imprisoned and fated to serve. The strong-minded Althea Lambros controls her own fate and lives to honor her dying mother’s plea to protect her two sisters at all costs. Althea’s journey toward crushing the tyranny has begun. It is a destiny foretold by the Fates. And she is following their visions.
On the southern isle of Crete, hidden among mortal women who have fled the Titans, is the Boy God, son of Cronus and believed dead. He shares Althea’s destiny to vanquish the Almighty—fate willing. Because Cronus has caught wind of the plot. He’s amassing his own forces against Althea’s righteous rebellion and all those who will no longer surrender or run. There will be war. If she’s to survive to write their history, the indomitable Althea must soar higher than any god.
MY REVIEW
At this point I think it’s pretty clear that I have a huge fascination and love for Greek mythology with the many retellings I’ve read so far. This reminds me a little of Circe by Madeline Miller, which I absolutely loved. Similar to Miller, King also plays with the story by giving some of the women in Greek mythos a bigger voice and a larger part of the story that they are typically left out of. What I like about this retelling, is that it is the story of how Cronus was overthrown and how Zeus came to power, which was a new one for me.
King did a good job of making the characters easy to like or hate. Althea, the main character, I thought was done very well and given a lot of development as well as depth and emotion to connect with her during her journey with all the adversity she had to deal with. There were a bunch of side-characters that were also given good treatment of depth to add more information to the characters of Cleora, Bronte, Theo, Zeus and many others.
“Dethroning Cronus is only one way the world needs to change. We also need to teach girls who they are, and offer them new options for who they can become.”
This was somewhat short and a bit more YA than I expected, but I felt like King did a good job of working in some feministic qualities to a Greek story that typically makes women out to not be much of a factor outside of a love interest. It’s an adventurous story of courage that weaved a bit of action, emotion and a smidge of romance, as does all Greek stories. It also gives an alternate type of story as to how the Titan, Cronus, devours his children which I thought was a pretty ingenious idea.
With that said, I did feel like the story-telling wasn’t very compelling or immersive and tad predictable. I also felt like the dialogue was a little on the weaker side of things, but these things may be part of the YA factor. I still enjoyed enough that I may continue to book 2 at some point in the future.
Wolfmantula.com 