Page count: 391 pages
Rating: 4 stars
CBR13 Bingo: Mythic (while this is pretty much a straight-up contemporary romance/erotica, the mythological influences are very much there throughout the book)
This book was granted to me as an ARC through NetGalley in return for an honest review. It's available now.
Persephone Dimitriou is a society darling, living in the lap of luxury in a stylish highrise in the city of Olympus. Her mother is Demeter, head of one of the thirteen ruling houses and while she seems to care for her four daughters, she clearly cares for ambition and power all the more. Persephone puts on a sunny and glamorous front and counts the days until she turns twenty-five when she will access her trust fund and bribe someone to get her out of Olympus forever. Imagine her shock when she is ambushed at a big society party with a public proposal from Zeus, heads of the thirteen houses himself (and a widower whose three previous wives all disappeared without a trace). Zeus makes Persephone's skin crawl and she leaves the party as soon as she's able, running away into the night to get away.
She finds herself chased by two of Zeus' henchmen towards the river Styx, the almost impossible to cross border between the glamourous upper city and the dark and neglected undercity. Utterly terrified, she forces herself to run across one of the few bridges, even as her feet are bleeding and her lungs are running out of air. A dark, mysterious stranger catches her and warns away her assailants, then bundles her up and literally carries her away to his home. The mystery man turns out to be none other than Hades, the believed to be dead scion of the thirteenth house. It's in the interest of the rulers of the other eleven houses (Hera doesn't rule her own house, that is the courtesy title that Zeus' wife holds) that Hades is kept as a shadowy sort of boogeyman, who only a few know of. He doesn't ever cross the river Styx to get to the upper city, they stay away from the lower city and his territory.
Hades already hates Zeus with every fiber of his scarred being. The only survivor of a horrible fire that killed his parents when he was a child, Hades has been a ruler of his house since he was very young, and he's spent most of his time making sure that the inhabitants of the undercity are safe and protected, and that he has contingency plans for whatever the other members of the Thirteen might come up with to mess with his people. He never expected to bring pretty princess Persephone half frozen to death with bleeding feet into his kitchen, furious about being abducted one minute and proposing an alliance and a very tempting bargain the next morning. Persephone has figured out that Hades hates Zeus, and what better way to stay safe from him (and provoke him massively in the process) than by offering herself to Hades as his lover. If she makes sure she is publically associated with Hades for the last three months of winter until she turns twenty-five, she's pretty sure Zeus will consider her damaged goods and no longer wish to marry her. Hades gets a chance to thumb his nose at his greatest enemy by "stealing" that which Zeus considers his by right.
While Zeus always made Persephone feel deeply uncomfortable, Hades makes her feel safe and clearly means to protect her, even from her own worst impulses. He's not at all impressed with her refusal to rest and wait for her feet to heal or her tendency to go for days without proper meals when she's stressed or processing things. While Hades may have the public persona of some dark lord of the seedy underworld, he's clearly a deeply lonely, physically and emotionally scarred man who protects all those he feels responsible for be they the various inhabitants in lower Olympus, his loyal staff...or Persephone.
Having had to make sure to hide her observant nature and sharp intelligence behind a facade of a beautiful, vacuous socialite in the years since her mother ascended to the position of Demeter, Persephone is both surprised and delighted to be able to be herself around Hades, even when that means being intentionally provoking and baiting him. She was drawn to him from the moment she first fell into his arms and rather eager at the chance to share his passions, even the darker, more public expressions of his desires. She agrees to his dominance when they are in public, but finds herself treated fully as a valued equal when they are alone together. With each passing week, the time they have left together becomes shorter and both Persephone and Hades fall more and more hopelessly for one another. Persephone has risked everything, including possibly the safety of her three beloved sisters, to find freedom away from Olympus - there is no future for her and Hades long term. Or is there?
I'd heard positive buzz about Neon Gods on various romance review sites, so jumped at the chance to get an ARC from Netgalley. As readers of my reviews know, while I probably still read more than most people I know (outside the Cannonballers, a huge amount of people who read WAY more than me), I am reading so much less than I have in previous years. I've already abandoned several reading challenges because I'm just never going to be able to keep up with them. I certainly wasn't expecting to pretty much devour this book in the space of fewer than 24 hours. The first few chapters are a bit slow and set up Persephone's desperate situation. Once she flees across the river Styx, however, I was utterly hooked and read far longer into the night than planned, and then ignored pretty much everything except seeing to the well-being of my child the following day. Luckily, at three and a half now, he is perfectly able to entertain himself for some amount of time, both inside and outside (I can read while he's building trains or digging in a sandbox) and since he doesn't usually get a lot of TV, an afternoon of Octonauts was a real treat for him. Sexy kissing book for Mummy, animated oceanography cartoon for him. Win-win.
I know that Katee Robert has written a series of erotica featuring a whole bunch of Disney characters and their smexy interactions. I read the first one, featuring Jasmine and Jafar, last year, but never really cared all that much, even if the levels of steam were rather higher than I tend to find in my novels. This new series, called Dark Olympus is apparently set in another part of the same world. It's a contemporary romance, with a dark edge, and as someone who has always loved the Hades and Persephone myth, it was a lot of fun to see how Robert retold it. It doesn't hurt that I loved both Hades and Persephone, as individual characters and as a couple. They compliment each other beautifully and their chemistry is off the charts.
The world-building that is established, with the glossy, celebrity-obsessed glitz of the upper Olympus, reminding me a bit of the description of the Capitol in The Hunger Games, without the televised fight to the death of a bunch of teenagers every year. There's still the ruthless, powerful rulers of the elite and a complete disconnect between the upper and lower city. In the lower city, Hades' domain, people seem to live much simpler, yet probably more rewarding lives, much of the old architecture is preserved and while the place is believed to be filled with thieves, bandits, and sexual perversion, it's mostly just full of folks minding their own business, all worshipping the ground Hades walks on since he's willing to do whatever it takes to keep them all safe. They all seem to welcome Persephone since it's obvious that she is great for Hades.
While all of Demeter's daughters have separate fathers, they are incredibly close and have each chosen their own way to survive in the spotlight of being a scion of a ruling house. Taking some liberties with the actual mythology, Robert has made Callisto, Psyche, Persephone, and Eurydice sisters in this world. The four women adore each other and feel very protective towards one another, so Persephone obviously has to keep her sisters updated about her whereabouts and the truth of her situation. I liked the close bonds between the women and will be interested to see where the series goes next (seems to be the story of Psyche and Eros, which has a lot of elements of one of my favourite fairy tales East of the Sun, West of the Moon, so I'm pretty much one-clicking as soon as the book becomes available for pre-order).
This book has a compelling romance between a cheerful, sunshiny heroine who isn't always all that sunny and a seemingly very grumpy, but very caring and protective hero who both enjoy some kink as well as a lot of more regular smexy times. Both protagonists appear to be bi and think back to same-sex relationships they have had in the past. There are frolicking puppies and a secret greenhouse garden, a lot of banter, and a compelling story surrounding the main romance as well.
If you like modern retellings in your romance, this is a really good one and worth checking out.
Judging a book by its cover: Very fitting for a book about the king of the underworld, the cover is in dark blue and purple tones, with a throne-like leather armchair front and centre. Hades does in fact have a throne of sorts, and it sees some pretty steamy action over the course of the story.
Crossposted on Cannonball Read.
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