Lore

by Alexandra Bracken

[thepunktheory]

Full review on my blog!


I think by now everybody here knows how much I love all things (Greek) mythology. So, obviously, I *had* to read Lore.

had heard a lot of praise about this book but other than that it was somehow related to Greek mythology (which I had garnered from the title and the cover) I knew nothing about Lore and had no clue what to expect from this story. Turns out, it’s a surprisingly fresh take on the matter and is certainly unlike anything else that I’ve read so far.

The concept is rather intriguing with old gods getting replaced by new ones but not in a way that you might think. It’s not just that they might have out of existence because people start believing in different things (which is a take I have read before), here it’s an actual fight to the death. You wanna be a god? You come from an ancient line of Greek heroes? Well then, go for it! While I consider this idea to be really captivating, I wish we would have gotten some more background information. Little bits of info and history on the week of fighting that happens in this novel are dispersed throughout but it didn’t feel like enough. In the end, this all still felt a little fuzzy to me. I get that the focus was not on the creation of this but since there is a lot of talk about the end, there should have been more substance to this newly created myth. And not just about the very origin, but a little more insight into the years between then and now would have been interesting. Yes, we get a bit of that through events closely related to Lore, but this is older than her and more things happened than what she experienced. Since this would also be somewhat integral to understanding this whole newly introduced concept, I consider it an important chunk to be missing. The thing is while reading you notice this a little bit but I was constantly thinking that more explanation would come at some later point. You can definitely follow the story without any issues, it’s not like it’s a glaring omission that ruins the book. But when I turned the last page and still didn’t have any answers to my questions I was mildly annoyed.

However, as I said, you can follow the story without deep background knowledge, so this is probably just a me problem. I always want *all* the info, but other readers might appreciate that we don’t get any lengthy backstory that you don’t necessarily need.
But I for my part would have appreciated for example more information on the heroes the families hail from. Or even more information on how the current gods are connected to ancient mythology.

The story we do get is captivating and comes with a host of twists and turns. There is for sure enough intriguing stuff going on for you to forget any little bits of criticism you might have. Lore is action-packed and fast-paced. As it takes place over the span of just a few days, a lot is happening in a very short time. The characters are interesting enough, even though there are some developments (read: the ending) that you can see coming from a mile off. For my taste, that was a little bit too cliché, but – again – I feel like many other readers wouldn’t mind this too much.

So far, this review sounds a little negative, but I didn’t mean it to. I really enjoyed this novel and never wanted to put it down. I wonder if at some point we could get an adaptation of this story. Lore would translate so well into a TV show, you could do an episode on each day that the book features and you’d get a perfect limited series. I can picture all the action sequences working out really well on screen – and of course, some of the godly powers coupled with some CGI would be amazing as well. Not every story works on screen, but I feel like Lore really has a decent shot at making a good show.