Solstice (Dying Earth, #1)

by P. J. Hoover

Piper's world is dying.

Each day brings hotter temperatures and heat bubbles that threaten to destroy the earth. Amid this global heating crisis, Piper lives under the oppressive rule of her mother, who suffocates her even more than the weather does. Everything changes on her eighteenth birthday, when her mother is called away on a mysterious errand and Piper seizes her first opportunity for freedom.

Piper discovers a universe she never knew existed—a sphere of gods and monsters—and realizes that her world is not the only one in crisis. While gods battle for control of the Underworld, Piper’s life spirals out of control as she struggles to find the answer to the secret that has been kept from her since birth.

An imaginative melding of mythology and dystopia, Solstice is the first YA novel by talented newcomer P. J. Hoover.

• ISBN10: 0765334690
• ISBN13: 9780765334695
• Publish Date: 18 June 2013 (first published 1 September 2011)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: St. Martins Press-3PL
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 382
• Language: English

Reviews

[Angie]

Solstice is one of those books where a negative review piqued my interest in it. Unfortunately, I ended up liking the idea of this book better than the actual book. The story started well enough with us being introduced to this future where Global Climate Change has actually become Global Warming as temperatures are nearly always over 110F. Piper lives with her super overprotective mother, and she essentially has no life outside of their greenhouse. But then there's a new mysterious boy. Scratch that. Two new mysterious boys. And now Piper's life is getting a bit more interesting, but of course, she's not who she thought she was.

I did love how Greek mythology was mixed with our current environmental problems. Even without the gods being involved, this future looks like something we could be heading for, and that's kind of scary. Solstice is a Dystopian-ish retelling of Persephone and Hades, so clearly, Piper is Persephone and her super possessive mother is really Demeter. It's also only in the last eighteen years that temperatures have reached their record highs. While I liked how Piper/Persephone's life with her mom has stopped the seasons from changing, I just couldn't help but wonder why it was stuck in summer. Shouldn't it have been perpetual spring? Unless there was some detail that I missed? Either way, one would think Lucia/Demeter being happy would cause her to be kind to the earth rather than killing it.

Being a retelling of Persephone and Hades, Solstice is heavy on the romance and the instalove. There's a kind of love triangle, but not really, since one guy that Piper is initially interested in turns out to be a creep and she doesn't want him, but he's desperate to have her. We're not really given a reason for that, other than he likes to win. So...yeah. But Piper instaloves on the other guy, but there's an explanation for that which makes it kind of not instalove and I kind of bought it. Except for...well, that's kind of a spoiler, so...oh well.

By the end of Solstice it seemed like reuniting Persephone and Hades was the main point of the book, since once that happen it suddenly ends. I do mean suddenly. There's other things going on, but the book just ends. I thought maybe it was the first in a series, but there's a happy epilogue. Does it touch on those dangling plot threads? Nope. Even though I wasn't loving the story, I did want more, since I wanted to know what happened to Piper's mom and that other guy, since they did some bad things. I also wanted to know what happened with the Climate Change now that she's free to move between worlds again. But it literally just comes to an end.

I really wanted to like Solstice, but that sadly didn't happen. There's a lot of interesting ideas, but nothing came together quite as well as it could have. I don't mind romance focused stories, but it is annoying that getting the romance resolved voided all of the other happenings.

Read more of my reviews at Pinkindle Reads & Reviews.

[ladygrey]

Most of this book was good. The writing didn't bother me and the world Hoover created was unique and fairly well drawn.

But something about the whole thing felt flat. I think that's because Piper was a kind of bland heroine. I mean, it was annoying when she was naive but there was a good plot reason for that naïveté. And she got angry and was irrational but she never really felt like a solidly developed character. It could have just been me, though. I was really tired when I read this.

Shayne, though, I thought was better developed. I still would have liked to have seen more distinction in his personas and the power with Hades. But mostly he was a good guy. I liked the way he balanced being seductive and a gentleman and quiet and comforting.

Now that I think about it, I think it felt flat to me because it was more of an analytic book than an emotional one. And we all know I like emotion in my stories.

Piper's mother was completely psychotic, but she was supposed to be. And Reese was erratic, veering between charming and the worst kind of domineering. But in both those characters I liked the way Hoover maintained some of the madness and unseemliness of Greek myths. I thought all the mythology was handled well, and I totally didn't expect it to be a mythological based story because apparently I forgot the synopsis by the time I got around to reading it.

I think people like to re-tell the Persephone myth because its one of the few that seems like it might actually be romantic. But I'd like to see some variety in our myth re-tellings. Which has nothing to do with Solstice, I was just thinking it.

[Ashley]

Nose Graze — Young Adult book reviews

Excuse me, folks, black sheep coming through.

The first quarter of Solstice left me in a constant state of confusion. Very suddenly, the main character is develops not one—but two—insta-love relationships. I figured there was some bigger picture at work, but it was annoying because the relationships reminded me of those books where there's the plain, 'normal' girl and every guy in a 2 mile radius is obsessed with her. Because in Solstice Piper had never dated ANYONE, and suddenly the two hottest guys she's ever seen are asking her out and fighting for her affection, and she's so madly obsessed with both of them. I was just like, "Really?" And this went on for so long that I was starting to seriously wonder if this was going to be the entire book (and in a way it kind of was).

More than anything, I'd say that Solstice is a romance book, with mythology and sci-fi twisted in (rather than the other way around). Once you get to the end of the book, you realize that everything revolves around the romance. And for me, that became a huge problem because I wasn't sold on the romance. I didn't feel the chemistry between Piper and Hades and the other love interest was such a massive douchebag. I think the biggest problem was that the nature of the romance made it very un-relatable. Piper and Hades had been in love and married for years and years. But the Piper's true identity (Persephone) was lost and she became reborn, with no memory of Hades. So when Hades finally finds her again, he's still madly in love with her, but Piper doesn't remember who he is. But since they have all this history, they are sort of madly and 'instantly' in love.. but as a reader, I never saw that past relationship so when they started developing strong feelings for each other really quickly, I just saw it as annoying and dreaded insta-love.

I also think that Piper accepted the existence of the Underworld and the reality of Greek Mythology way too easily. It's like she got taken into the Underworld and just turned to Hades and said, "Oh I've heard myths about this place! It's real? Cool!" And that was it. Maybe in some way it does make sense, because deep down she already knew about the existence of the Underworld... but still.

And then almost every part of the story of Solstice was just so predictable and obvious. Like once we figured out that Reese was Ares, the God of War, I thought it was so obvious that Piper's mom knows him (and Shayne). But it took so long for Piper to catch up to that fact. When she finally did, I was just like, "Way ahead of you, girl." And then there's the whole thing with Piper truly being Persephone. Once again, I figured that out WAY before Piper did. As soon as I realized Hades was the main god in the book, I guessed that Piper was Persephone. Because let's be honest, a story with Hades in it is going to be about Persephone as well. But Piper didn't figure that out until the last quarter of the book. I just felt like I was constantly waiting for Piper to catch up to me.

Overall I'm massively disappointed by Solstice. It sounded like a fantastic book and got so many great reviews, and I'm so bummed that I'm a black sheep here. I wanted to love this book, and I thought I would because it combines so many elements that I love (Greek mythology, global warming, sci-fi, romance..). But I think the whacky insta-love-y triangle just ruined the book for me. It started so suddenly and was way too strong, and then dominated the whole book. I was put off by it from the very beginning. I literally think my face was contorted with confusion for the first half of the book, as I tried to figure out why we were dealing with two crazy cases of insta-love.