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.
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I am very conflicted when it comes to LORE. On one hand, it is a neat concept–the old gods are punished by Zeus to run along and be hunted by mortals every 7 years. Once a mortal kills the original god that mortal then takes over that god’s abilities. On the other hand the execution was… so so.
I was not a fan of the entire novel being set in NY–I love NY, for the most part it is a great setting, but in Lore it felt constricting. If it had branched out, maybe to the god’s home turf for example, in order to discover the origin of the Agon and make Athena confront her past transgressions in that way, and maybe even get an actual confrontation with Zeus…
Maybe it shouldn’t have been a stand alone? Perhaps a duology would have served it well. That way not everything would have been so clustered together, you would have gotten some time to fall in love with the characters,etc. A LOT happens, a lot of characters are at play, and maybe they didn’t all get the page time they deserved.
Overall my favorite characters would have to be Lore and Miles–in fact, if this entire novel had been just them facing Lore’s past I would have been fine with it. Miles is the regular best friend to Lore. He is funny, he is brave, and a joy to have on the page. Lore is complicated and conflicted. In her heart she wants to fight, but she also knows that is not the right path. She battles her inner demons/desires on a daily basis, but once presented with the opportunity for revenge from Athena she is hooked.
Athena is seriously fun to read about. She is one of the few original gods left, and feels oh so disgusted to have to go to a mortal for help. Her dialogue is fantastic. She gets confronted by Lore about her past, in one of the best chapters of the entire book, and has to tell her side of the story when it comes to her neglect or even her seemed attack on women (aka Medusa). And I mean, is anybody surprised that the patriarchy would have used her stories to further their agenda? I don’t think so.
I really think Lore should have been bigger, longer. It feels like a story that is being chocked by its limitations. It is a lot of fun, and a lot of interesting things happen, but if it could have been expanded it would have been truly great, and those reveals would have punched us a little harder.
PS; I was provided a review copy in exchange for an honest review. Thanks go to the publisher!
For the Sake of Reading 