Review - Hera, Queen of Mortals by T. D. Thomas (Goddess Unbound #2)

Hello there! So, after I finished reading Hera, Queen of the Gods, quickly, I immediatly dived into Hera, Queen of Mortals, Book 2 of the Goddess Unbound series. Also, right after that, I jumped into the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series, so I will make some comparisions, if you don't mind. Also, there will be spoilers for Hera, Queen of the Gods, as it's impossible not to.

You can read my review of Hera, Queen of the Gods here.

After we solve the main plot on the first book, all the Gods go back to the heavens, but something is wrong. Ekhidna is on the loose and she's plotting something real big. She's hidden big parts of Earth, using the same kind of cloud from the first book, so the Gods can't see.

An army is around and now the Gods will take turns on Earth and try to find out the issues and fix them. Hera feels responsible and, as such, she volunteers to stay fixed on Earth. The others will take turns, but she will only go back to the Heavens once it's all solved.

Yes I stole the image from Amazon.

Hera and Demeter are on Earth and they are looking for Heroes. This time, instead of Gods trying to solve everything, they will find the humans with a Hero's soul, the ones that can be "sort-of-divine", they have one power, just like the Gods, and will help the Gods to solve their problems. This time, Hera came with the power of telling the future, which I didn't like. Sure, it was handy and it helped a lot, but somehow mind controlling was cooler. Also, this time, we get to see many more monsters, so many, actually, that I didn't get to remember the name and powers of all of them. While on Book #1, we only saw Harpies and Phytons, on Book #2 we get to know at least 4 or 5 different kinds of monsters and it gets kind of confusing...

((BIG SPOILER)) Even if Justin dies on Book #1, we have him, sort of, in Book #2. Not going to spoil more than that, but to say that it's an interesting relationship and that I'm interested in how it'll continue. I'm a bit frustrated about the power abuser that he becomes when he's... On Dream-mode, so to say.

Now, I have to say I liked Book #1 better. Not sure why. Possibly because on the first one, we have the Gods as characters and they are already known, so we can work with character development from a known base. With the heroes, on book #2, we don't have their background and at the same time, they are developing and we are trying to find new heroes and everything seems a bit rushed. Hera, however, is weaker, more human than ever. It's an interesting character development and I guess it's interesting because Hera is one of the Gods that we hear the least about. She's usually just the wife of Zeus who gets jealous and curses people who he fall in love with, mostly. So it's something new to see her for herself.

Comparing to Percy Jackson, you can see clearly that Percy Jackson and the Olympians is a series intended for 12 to 15 year olds. Even if Percy is 16 when the book finishes, I don't think it was intended as a book for older teens. It's innocent and sort of childish, while the Greek Myths aren't.The Goddess Unbound series is much more interesting, it's intended for older audiences and even if the Gods take over teenagers bodies, you can feel they're older teens, the heroes are teens, but they are older teens too, it's never mentioned, that I remember, but you can see in their attitudes and feel it. I'd say it's a book for post-teens (young 20's) and I'd like to see the Gods go on taking bodies of older people, so we can see the story develop in a more mature way.

Also, I'd like the books to be longer. The story has many nuances that could've been explored but weren't, because it was a bit rushed, I'd like to see more relationship between the characters - not have their personality described and determined by a couple of sentences - and some plot developments felt rushed too. I see lots of potential, but we have to keep up with the Book #1 rhythm.

You can buy Hera, Queen of the Mortals at Amazon.

You can read my review of Hera, Queen of the Gods here.

Review - Hera, Queen of Gods by T. D. Thomas (Goddess Unbound #1)

Hello there! After a long period of extreme work and a decent period of vacations, I'm back to reading and blogging (hopefully).

The latest series I've been loving is the Goddess Unbound series by T. D. Thomas. I've received the first book in 2012, actually, and seem to have misplaced the file until I found it during my vacations and read it in one day. It was amazing and I was dying to share with you but, more than anything, I needed the sequel, so I got that one and the review is coming up soon too.

When the Fates go missing, most likely kidnapped, Hera, Queen of the Gods, has to descend into the mortal world to try and find them in a city that is being kept in the dark from the Gods, with a dark cloud stopping them form seeing. She and 6 other gods take mortal bodies - teen bodies, for teenagers understand it better than anyone that it's all about power - and start looking for the Fates. Zeus, Hera, Athena, Demeter, Artemis, Apollo and Hermes take mortal bodies and roam the world, looking for any sign or information about the Fates, who took them or what they are planning on... When they stumble into Justin, a mere mortal teen boy.

Strangely, Justin seems to be able to tell there's something wrong with those people who used to be random students at his school and are now banded together using weird "nicknames". When their cover story doesn't work well (not as easy to hide the truth when you are using your powers and a giant is after you), they are forced to tell him the truth. He's taken along and proves himself quite useful, but I won't spoil anything.

One of the interesting points was that the Gods were only allowed to take one power each, because the mortal bodies couldn't hold all of their powers. Hera took the power of mind control, through her eyes, Zeus took strength, Athena mind reading, Demeter plant control, Artemis shapeshifting, Apollo healing and Hermes invisibility. But since they are used to having so many powers, it's hard for them to survive with only one and when they find out that these mortal bodies are more frail than they thought, well, things start getting scary.

Monsters keep going after them, specifically, Pythons and Harpies. All the time. Everywhere they go. So not only they have to fight the monsters and, usually, run, because they aren't as powerful as they would be and there are many monsters, they still have to find the Fates, whoever kidnapped them AND stop whatever plan they may have that, the Fates being as powerful as they are, most likely is something like destroying the fabric of reality.

It is supposed to be a YA story, since the main characters are either teenagers or in teenagers' bodies, but I can barely picture them as 17-18 year olds, it seems like they are so mature, even the non-god(esse)s ones, that it's hard to picture them as young teens. Besides, the themes on the book and the way they're portrayed is quite grown up, which makes it hard to believe it's YA. So I wouldn't recommend for young or impressionable people, but older teens, that would be awesome.

You can buy Hera, Queen of Gods (Goddess Unbound) at Amazon (link on the book title), I mean, it's under US$ 1,00! It's only US$ 0,93 and it's an amazing book, you can't say no to that, can you? No you can't, I knew that :)

So, now, click click, go buy! And keep tuned for the sequel's review!

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