Antigoddess (Goddess War, #1)

by Kendare Blake

Athena and Hermes' search for the cause of their unexpected, life-threatening illnesses leads them to Cassandra, a former prophetess, who may be key to a war started by Hera and other Olympians who have become corrupt anti-gods determined to destroy their rivals.

• ISBN10: 0765334437
• ISBN13: 9780765334435
• Publish Date: 10 September 2013
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 8 November 2022
• Imprint: Tor Teen
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 336
• Language: English

Reviews

[Amber (The Literary Phoenix)]

I had a lot of hopes for this book, especially with the way it started out. I really liked the atmosphere at the beginning, and I remember feeling similarly about Anna Dressed in Blood at the beginning as well, but like her other novel, Antigoddess is a lot of conversation and cheesy love story, and less excellent aesthetics.

The beginning, like I said, is great. We start in a desert with Athena and Hermes, searching for Demeter. We know that the gods are dying, each in their own way. It’s creative and the atmosphere is spot on. It’s slow moving, but it’s the beginning of the book. After that opening sequence, I feel like that excellent, gritty feel to the story never returned. The horror-aspects of the novel are fantastic, but they are few and far between, and the setting settles in upstate New York with very little focus on the world and a lot more focus on the characters.

These character talk a lot. About their feelings, about what they’re going to do, about what they aren’t going to do, about what they believe or don’t believe. Kendare Blake set us up with a ticking clock at the beginning of the novel, one the characters are aware of, so the amount of time they spend driving around or talking to people and not really taking action is super frustrating. Instead of having a tense story while the characters struggling to beat the clock, it dragged. The story built up to a cumulation at the end that was generally unsatisfying and was still interrupted with a lot of conversation and reflection.

Ultimately, I think the two main story elements – romance and mythology – didn’t mesh together well. Not to say that they couldn’t, but I didn’t believe any of it. Antigoddess reads like a paranormal romance and it’s easy to forget the characters are all teens, because they don’t act much like teens, they do whatever they want, and there are no real world consequences to their actions. The only difference between Antigoddess and an adult paranormal romance is the love story – puppy dog eyes instead of steamy sex scenes. Otherwise, it is spot on.

And because of that, my opinion in skewed.

I don’t typically enjoy paranormal romance because I find I like the paranormal, and the romance utterly gets in the way of what could be a really cool plot. Gods dying? That’s awesome! A reincarnated Greek figure in love with a God who jilted her and now they are talking about their feelings instead of figuring out a way to stop (or speed up?) the slow death of the gods? Decidedly less interesting for me.

Additionally, everything was so convenient. Cassandra’s character has evolved in just the right way that she can stop everything, but not in the way you may think with her character. Plus we run into all sorts of conveniently placed heroes. Odysseus, introduced early on, serves absolutely no purpose other than to be a distracting love interest for Athena. Also, and this is just a personal pet peeve and runs into Percy Jackson as well – why are all the gods, goddesses, children, and reincarnations in the US? No.

I spent a lot of this book being frustrated or annoyed. Because, liked Anna Dressed in Blood, I think Kendare Blake has some real skill in world building… but she’s not using it to its full effect. I want more of the story she started with, most deserts and wasted goddesses and deep struggle mixed with driven desperation. Does anyone know of one of her books where the love story isn’t front and center? I want to read that book.

[jesstheaudiobookworm]

4.5★ Audiobook⎮ I’m so glad that I didn’t give up on Kendare Blake after my failed attempt(s) with Anna Dressed in Blood. Antigoddess is so different from that and so much more my speed. It still has touches of Blake’s horror-esque graphicness, but was much milder overall. I’m not sure where the Stephen King comparison on the cover comes from, though.

Antigoddess was extremely reminiscent of Josephine Angelini’s Starcrossed trilogy, although not as well written or developed. Still, it’s hard to mess up a plot that involves reincarnated Greek gods because that idea is just so cool. Instead of Helen and Paris of Troy (as in Starcrossed), Antigoddess focused on the prophetess Cassandra and the god Apollo. Different players, same game.

Antigoddess alternated points-of-view between teenaged Cassandra and Athena and Hermes. The chapters with Athena and Hermes were most informative, as they provided some backstory on how the gods had been keeping busy for the past 2000 years. There was a strong, but not always positive, family dynamic between Athena, Hermes, and the rest of the gods. Because, as you now, they are all closely related. [insert incest joke here].

Even if you weren’t aware of the close familial ties, Blake makes it clear. She does an excellent job of helping the reader/listener recall long lost Greek mythology facts from 10th grade. Quick tip: Just assume they are all half-siblings via Zeus, unless told otherwise. The mythology brush up was really appreciated, as I hadn’t thought about Greek mythology in a very long time, despite still being interested in it. However, I do wish Blake had been a little more imaginative in using Homer’s tales, instead of relying so strongly on them. There’s a pretty large 2000 year gap between the Trojan war and the contemporary plot and Blake does very little to fill it.

That’s why I can’t give Antigoddess more than 4.5 stars. I enjoyed Antigoddess a lot, but mostly because I already enjoy Greek mythology, not because I enjoyed anything particularly specific to the way Blake used it. Her character development of the gods was adequate, but the world-building felt neglected. I’m very hopeful that my appreciation of Kendare Blake’s writing style and her attention to world-building will grow in the following installments. In that respect, Antigoddess definitely has one up on Starcrossed in that its entire series is available on audio.

Narration review: Practically from pressing play, I was in love with Kate Reading’s narration. She also narrated Stephenie Meyer’s The Host, which was one of the first audiobooks I heard. Her voice has one of the most beautiful timbres I’ve ever heard. It caused me to listen to Antigoddess well into the night, when I’d only intended to listen for a couple of hours. She provided accents when necessary and altered her voice considerably when a character’s voice was damaged. The vocal distinction could have been more prominent with background characters, but it was wonderful most other times. I already have the next two installments in this series and is quite possible that I’m looking forward to them more because of Kate Reading than the actual story. ♣︎

[Stephanie]

I just. Ugh. This book was good (not great), a definite solid three. I feel like there was some backstory, some little thing, that was missing in terms of understanding the plot. And honestly, the whole book should have (and could have) been from Athena's POV and I would have liked it more. Cassandra was important but I felt her bits were so haphazard and there for the 'omfg love story' bits (spoiler: it was unnecessary)