MY ⭐️ RATING: 3/5
Format: Kindle Whispersync
BOOK DESCRIPTION
The winding road of fate unfolds …
In the last days of the Silver Age, the tyrant god Zeus takes whatever and whomever he wants with impunity. He has already torn Pandora from one home and now he threatens to destroy another.
When he turns his wrath upon Atlantis, Pandora flees with the Titan Prometheus. Despite her bitterness, Pandora finds a friendship she never imagined possible. But Zeus is not done with Prometheus, and what Pandora will face next will make all she has endured pale in comparison.
But Pandora has considerable gifts of her own, not least her cunning mind. When Zeus binds Prometheus, Pandora swears to turn all those gifts toward bringing Zeus down and saving her one true companion.
MY REVIEW
My love for Greek mythology is very well known to a lot of people, and I’m also a big fan of the GrimDark/dark fantasy genre as well. What Larkin does by combining those elements together by retelling a classic story with darker tones, was right up my alley. What I love about Greek mythology is that there are a lot of ideas for an author to grab to add some meat and depth to. Larkin does a fantastic job of this with his complex story-telling by expanding on this story of Pandora’s Box and adding extra characters that previously weren’t involved. He clearly did a lot of research to bring this story to life and also does a great job of adding in some realistic human motivations by showing just how petty the gods could be.
It features some very dark tones, like abduction and rape, which is not shown, just mentioned that it happened, murder, and even the destruction of Atlantis by Zeus. A major part of the story-line centers around nectar, which is basically a bootleg version of ambrosia that is outlawed by Zeus because of what it can do for mortals along with it’s side-effects for those that use it. Though that is a major part of what motivates Pandora, there is also a lighter side of this story that is centered around family that helps make this story all that more interesting, and an ending that I was not expecting at all!
“If there was one truth that ever guided her life it was this: the very existence of mysteries demanded someone solve them.”
Told through multiple POV’s of Pandora, Prometheus, Athene, Kirke and Pyrrah, and different time periods during the silver and golden age, as well as an insanely large cast that features Artemis, Kratos, Hekate, Kalypso and many many more, which can make the story a bit difficult to follow at the beginning, but it does get easier as the story progresses and you understand the story that’s being told a lot more. The story itself is written very well, but it left me wishing it was more than it was, because nothing really gave that sense of urgency making me want to flip to the next page to see what happened next. For the size of the book, and what it’s about, this should’ve only taken a couple days, rather than nine it took to complete.
Tawny Platis does a great job with her narration by differentiating the voices and getting into the scene when the writing asked for it, like when something was written in ALL CAPS, and I also enjoyed hearing the way she pronounced certain places and names that I always pronounced a different way, some of that is due to Larkin using the correct lettering with K’s instead of C’s, like Kirke instead of Circe. With that said, the voice she used as the narrator was a bit too soft and calm, almost meditation-like and it took me out of it on several occasions where I lost my focus and the drive to continue listening. Even some of the more “exciting” scenes just felt like any other moment because there was no intensity in her voice, since it wasn’t in all caps, that had me on the edge of my seat. I wanted to love this story, but in the end, it was just ok, and likely my only foray into Larkin’s Tapestry of Fate and the Eschaton Cycle as a whole.
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