Antigoddess | Book review

Title: Antigoddess (Goddess War #1)

Author: Kendare Blake

Published: September 10th 2013 by Tor Teen

Goodreads summary: The Goddess War begins in Antigoddess, the first installment of the new series by acclaimed author of Anna Dressed in Blood, Kendare Blake.

Old Gods never die…

Or so Athena thought. But then the feathers started sprouting beneath her skin, invading her lungs like a strange cancer, and Hermes showed up with a fever eating away his flesh. So much for living a quiet eternity in perpetual health.

Desperately seeking the cause of their slow, miserable deaths, Athena and Hermes travel the world, gathering allies and discovering enemies both new and old. Their search leads them to Cassandra—an ordinary girl who was once an extraordinary prophetess, protected and loved by a god. 

These days, Cassandra doesn’t involve herself in the business of gods—in fact, she doesn’t even know they exist. But she could be the key in a war that is only just beginning. 

Because Hera, the queen of the gods, has aligned herself with other of the ancient Olympians, who are killing off rivals in an attempt to prolong their own lives. But these anti-gods have become corrupted in their desperation to survive, horrific caricatures of their former glory. Athena will need every advantage she can get, because immortals don’t just flicker out. 

Every one of them dies in their own way. Some choke on feathers. Others become monsters. All of them rage against their last breath.

The Goddess War is about to begin.

REVIEW

I had really enjoyed Anna dressed in Blood and Girl of Nightmares by the same author, I was curious about this one but didn’t know what to expect. The main problem when you talk about Greek mythology in your books is that you have to deal with the comparison with the Percy Jackson series. This book was really different from that and I really enjoyed it. Just like in Anna, I really enjoyed Blake’s writing style, her descriptions are always very vivid, though creepy, but that’s why I loved her in Anna anyway.

I felt the plot was a little bit too slow in the beginning, mainly because we had two points of view: Cassandra and Aidan’s, Hermes and Athena’s. Because we had the gods’ point of view, we knew what was going on when Cassandra didn’t, I just waited for her to understand and it seemed so long, when I had figured everything out. I was also tired of waiting for the two points of view to meet, it happened like 55% into this book. However, reading both these points of view made sense. There was a lot more happening for the gods than for the humans.

Athena was probably my favourite character. She looks like a punk, which made me smile a lot, because it’s not how you would picture her. The fact that the gods’ deaths were based on their attributes, like the owl feathers for Athena, was really interesting. During the novel we saw her being more and more human, even questioning her actions in the past. Relationship between the gods was something I really enjoyed reading about, especially that after all these millenniums, they’re now apart.

I’m really interested to see where this story is going, even though I hope the team won’t take down an important god in each book, because it would be repetitive. About that, I liked that everyone is important in this team, secondary characters were added, but they all have their backstories. The ending left me in awe, because I didn’t expect that. AT ALL. I’m excited to learn what will happen in the next book because of that.

Have you read this book? Are you interested in it? Do you have other recommendations for me, books dealing with ancien mythology (exception Riordan's books, because I read them all^^)?