Neon Gods: Dark Olympus book 1 - Review
By Katee Stewart
Time spent reading: 07.11.2022 - 1 day
⭐️⭐️⭐️ (3/5)
Katee Stewart is very well known for her "retelling series", which are basically books that retell the storys of famous characters that already exist, but with a twist of dark romance. In this case, the "Dark Olympus series" is about greek mithology. Before i read it i was sure this was going to have a lot of fantasy behind it, but surprisingly, i found out that this modern retellings are basically a "What if the gods were normal people?" trope. They carry guns instead of "superpowers" and are totally and completely mortal.
Neon gods tells the story of Hades (the God of the underworld) and Persephone (one of the 4 daughters of Demeter, godess of the harvest). Persephone is the kind of person who does everything for her mother, even if she hates it. Her sisters are all kind of "wildchilds" who hate olympus and everything it's stands for, so she pretends she is not the same as them and tries to comply to it's rules so her mother doesen't loose her sanity to her own daughters.
Demeter is a woman who likes power, and it looks like being one of the Thirteen isn't enought for her, since she is trying to marry Persephone off to Zeus, the most egoistical, self centric, ugly asswhole, which also happens to be the king of almost everything.
She was 3 months alway from turning 25, which would have meant freedom, and now her mother does THIS to her?! She ends up running away and being hunted by Zeus' men. But when they corner the poor girl on River Synx, the only way out is to cross the bridge.
Hades is a myth in this book, everybody on Olympus thinks Zeus is also the king of the Underworld, but that is not the case. Persephone, as well as everyone, thinks Hades died years ago, so when she crosses the river to the Underworld and finds out he is actually very much alive, she learns that it might be very convinient of them, to make a deal to get their Vengence on the God of lightning. And that plan, might happen to include a little bit of romance on their part, just to infuriate Zeus...
I know this is a very, very long Summary, but i just love this kind of stories about Greek Mithology that I could talk about it everyday. I would basically reccommend this for anyone who is interested in theses myths as well.
It is optional, but you might want to know a bit about the thirteen main gods and what they do. The story tells us a bit about them but only near the end, so if you know NOTHING at all, it might be confusing but if you know the basics then you are absolutely fine.
Also, you won't want to read this if you don't like very Dark Romance. The plot is basically about that so even if the story is kinda interesting and cool, you don't wanna read it, if not for the romance.
I really liked it overall and could not stop reading. Looking forward to reading the rest of these books.
Can ABSOLUTELY read it as a standalone.