Persephone - Kaitlin Bevis (Daughters of Zeus #1)

Let's start with this: I did not enjoy this book.  It intrigued me, because I love stories based off myths and fairytales, and the story of Persephone and Hades is one my favorites.  I read and devoured Meg Cabot's Abandon series a year or two back, which was based on the Persephone story and was absolutely delicious.  I was hoping that Kaitlin Bevis' adaption would be more along those lines.  It wasn't.

The story is about Persephone, who is in high school when she abruptly finds out that she's a goddess, that the god of winter is after her, and that the guy who rescued her from her is now her husband.  Suddenly living in the underworld, does Persephone fret her pretty little head off about her mother and friends on earth?  No.  What does she do instead?  She shops.  She drinks coffee.  She designs dresses and re-decorates her room.  Apparently the underworld is like suburbia.  Eventually, of course, she gets her butt in motion and actually does something, but only after pages and pages and pages of her fretting about like a regular sixteen-year-old, not one who should have larger concerns than the view outside her bedroom windows.  Other annoying things about her: men fall in love with her at first sight (multiple times, and not just Hades; Hades gets a pass because that's how the myth goes).

The supporting characters annoyed me just as much.  The gods are supposed to thousands of years old, and yet they all act like a bunch of teenagers.  Hades, Thanatos, Demeter...all of them seem to not possess an ounce of sense in their god-like heads, as did their lackeys the Reapers, Charon, and even Persephone's friend Melissa (who was, to be fair, an actual teenager).  Boreas, as a villain, was completely lacking from the picture.  Cassandra, who should have been awesome, was merely annoying instead.  Bevis decided to do away with the part of Cassandra's curse that dictated that no one would believe her visions, instead deciding to go with the curse ended when she died, which basically means Cassandra knows everything that's coming and tells Hades about it in advance so he can deal with it, and Persephone never needs to.  Cassandra could have been an incredibly compelling character, but was instead relegated to cheesy, annoying sidekick.

The settings were also cringe-worthy; the underworld is apparently just like suburbia, very Stepford Wives-ish but without the menace lurking underneath.  Tartarus could have provided an interesting component but was, again, pushed off to the side so that Bevis could talk more about Persephone's flowershop in the suburbs of the underworld.

And the romance?  Pretty much non-existent.  Hades falls in love with Persephone at first sight, as per the myth, and that's about it.  There's no real development of their relationship on either side.  Oh, and the winter that descends upon the world is from Boreas, not from Demeter missing and searching for her daughter.  No, Demeter is totally okay with her daughter going off to the underworld and marrying a guy thousands of years older than her.  What?  What what what?

And the writing!  Bevis skips from one incident to another with no smooth transitions, to the point that at the beginning of the book I found myself wondering what the heck was going on at some points.  "Where did this come from?" I wondered, for a long time before realizing it was a completely different scene and time, there just hadn't been any transition to it.  Unnecessary adverbs abound, Hades sighs about every two seconds... I could go on, but I won't.

If you're looking for a young adult adaptation of the Persephone story, try Meg Cabot's Abandon instead; I reviewed the trilogy here, and while I certainly had some issues with it, it left a much better impression overall than Bevis' adaptation did.  If you want a young adult story of a girl coming into crazy nature powers and falling in love with a death god, try Kresley Cole's Aracana series.  Both, I think, would be far better options than this book.

1.5 stars out of 5.

The Abandon Trilogy - Meg Cabot

Meg Cabot's Abandon trilogy is like candy, or soda, or popcorn absolutely smothered in butter and salt.  What I'm getting at here is that it's good, but it isn't good for you.  I really like Meg Cabot's paranormal romances (I adore the Mediator series, and I've also enjoyed the 1-800-Where-R-U books) and this trilogy was no different.  The idea of a modern retelling of the story of Hades and Persephone appealed to me, so I was eager to pick this up.  In some ways, it disappointed.  In others, it did not.  So, here is a brief summary of what I liked and did not like about the three books (Abandon, Underworld, Awaken) in this series.

I liked the setting of Isle Huesos.  This should not surprise me, because Cabot based the setting off Key West, which is one of my favorite places in the world.  Am I sure she captured the spirit of Key West?  I'm not really sure, but since she lives there part of the time, I'm going to assume she knows it much better than I do and put my faith in her basis.  I liked the characters, generally.  Some of them were a little one-dimensional, but the main characters were all pretty well-done.  I generally liked the plot, which revolves around the heroine, Pierce, coming to terms with her position as the queen of the underworld and battling against the evil forces of Furies.  I liked parts of her relationship with John, but certainly not all of it.

So, what did I not like?  Well, the first book in the trilogy is almost entirely setup, and the whole "relationship" aspect doesn't exactly make much sense.  Pierce says at the beginning that her heart is "broken," presumably by John, but she doesn't spend much of the book acting like she likes him.  In fact, she spends most of it terrified of him.  Which makes the sudden romance later a little weird.  The parents in these books also show a remarkable lack of involvement, considering their children are skipping school, disappearing from town entirely, and getting involved in murder investigations.  Seems unlikely to me, even with the "supernatural" aspect.  Also, for a series that is always going on about "consequences," there are remarkably few.  There is a controlling, possibly emotionally-abusive relationship.  There is unprotected sex.  There is an "imbalance" that never actually seems to get fixed, and what the hell is up with Pierce's necklace being purple, anyway?  That's never explained.  And half the plot of the third book appears to have been thrown in because Cabot had nothing better to write about for the first half of the book.  And the syrupy-sweet ending kind of made me sick.  All of these things are things that make these books not good for you.  You should not really encourage teenage girls to run off with guys they met when they were dead, especially when those guys have been stalking you and plan to keep you hostage in the underworld for the rest of, well, forever.  You shouldn't encourage the rampant lying to parents, the investigations into drug trafficking, the fear of the police.

But all that said, I still liked it.

3 stars out of 5.