Really fun book. It's funny and interesting and well written. The summary on the book jacket only talks about Artemis, but the story involves all the Olympian gods and the mortals who come into contact with them.
The story is about the Olympian gods who moved to London, England, during the industrial revolution. Slowly, over the years the gods started losing their power because they were getting old and people stopped believing in them. In present day, Artemis is a disillusioned dog-walker, Apollo is a tv psychic personality, Aphrodite does phone sex, etc... to pass the time. One day, during a taping of Apollo's tv show, Aphrodite, who was angry at Apollo for something, convinced Eros to shoot one of his love arrows into Apollo to force him to fall in love with a mortal. The mortal, Alice, was already in love with a man named Neil, so no matter what Apollo did to seduce her, it didn't work. Finally, when Alice refused Apollo, he decided to take his revenge on her by having Zeus kill her by lightning. She dies, and Neil becomes the unlikely hero that brings her back to life and saves the gods from the pathetic life of useless boredom.
It's an interesting imagining of what old gods might be doing after they cease to be worshipped... but I would be even more interested to know if the Olympian gods interacted with other deities in other parts of the world. Like, what if Artemis was a good friend with Kwan Yin. Or Hades played tennis with Osiris... now that would be interesting. Although, if the other gods existed, then the world wouldn't end if Apollo fell into a coma, because a different god of the sun could pick up the slack... I guess that would have to be a different story then.
Friday, June 11, 2010
Friday, June 4, 2010
The Golden Mean by Annabel Lyon
Amazing book. This book is so well written that it both explains my complaints about The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane and crushes the other book with its superior quality as a book. Annabel Lyon writes in first person as Aristotle, so you get to hear his thoughts and you get to feel his impressions for people - you are never told that he is a manic depressive little man with a great mind, you see it and you feel it instead.
The story revolves around Aristotle's life as he begins teaching Alexander the Great as a child. You get a good sense of what life could be like in ancient Macedonia, and you get a distinct impression of Alexander and Aristotle's personalities. Both become great men in the eyes of history, but both were seen as wild and crazy and unusual in their time.
My one complaint is the amount of swearing included in the book. It's a little jarring when you read it for the first time, because you don't expect to see it in a historical novel. However, when you think about it, that is the language they would have used in a warrior society - not everybody spoke as eloquently as Shakespeare would have us believe.
The story revolves around Aristotle's life as he begins teaching Alexander the Great as a child. You get a good sense of what life could be like in ancient Macedonia, and you get a distinct impression of Alexander and Aristotle's personalities. Both become great men in the eyes of history, but both were seen as wild and crazy and unusual in their time.
My one complaint is the amount of swearing included in the book. It's a little jarring when you read it for the first time, because you don't expect to see it in a historical novel. However, when you think about it, that is the language they would have used in a warrior society - not everybody spoke as eloquently as Shakespeare would have us believe.
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