Heir to the Underworld; a Olympian read

So, this was a book given to me by the author, asking for a review. When I read the message the first time, I was interested, because it focuses on Greek mythology, which is something that has been near and dear to my heart since I was in elementary school. The second part of the message that interested me was when the author mentioned that there are LGBT characters, because I am all about the representation, but was a little unsure for the fact that some people like saying that LGBT characters are present, but forget to show them. It also reminded me of the works of Rick Riordan (Love Percy Jackson with my soul), and a novel about the Greek Gods of my own (The world doesn't need to see it).

We start at Mount Olympus with Zeus, who is contemplating retirement, which sounds like a strange notion for a god to think of. The first chapter opens with Mount Olympus University (MOU) in Greece, and a rag tag bunch of characters. This list of characters are blessed by the gods, and become the New Gods (legit how they are referred in the book). We follow them as they learn to be the gods, and all the struggles that come with it. The bunch learn to live with one another in a hella fancy apartment, one that I wish I could live in when I was a freshman instead of the dorm I resided in. They have to fight Medea and her desire for revenge against Hera and the rest of the Gods for tying her to Jason and leaving her to suffer greatly; with her raising the souls of the damned from Tartarus.

I have thoughts about this work, and I may sound like I'm going on a rant, but bear with me. The first thing that I noticed in the book was the creativity of the main characters' names. I write notes when I am reading books, especially if it has a lot of characters that I could get confused; so notebook was at the ready. I made a whole page dedicated to the characters, and I was being my greek mythology nerd self by trying to identity which god spoke for which character. Boy, was that an easy feat, one character is named Renee Hart, a french fashion and arts person; who becomes Aphrodite. This lack of creativity in the names lowered my motivation to continue reading, but I did. I will say though, the author did take their time in finding other languages to seek the names, with Ana Maria Sabio and Ben (Finster) Darke being rather good. One character was named Irene Holmes, and randomly she was referred to as Irene Adler, I don't know if this is a nod to the author shipping Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes, but the forgetfulness of the author about their own characters left me wanting more.

Another thing that got to me was how parts of the book seem there as almost filler, like there were chapters that I don't have notes on, because the bunch were walking through the garden of Persephone. There are times that I wish we would learn more about their training and how they learn to live with one another, especially since Ben (Heir to the Underworld) is constantly forgotten. Another chapter where Hades speaks about how he is glad that they are all retiring, while his motivations are cute, because he wants to spend time with his wife, I found myself getting bored and frustrated with the book. The plot really starts at chapter 19, but the problem is that the villain that jumpstarts the plot is basically defeated in chapter 20; so it feels like a small amount of plot for a lot of exposition. The book on a whole felt dry, like it would be better as a shorter story, or maybe with the filler chunks taken out for a more cohesive plot formation.

I love when independent authors reach out to spread their works, and I think that people should continue that. In this case however, I feel like there is work to be done to improve the work, from spelling errors, forgetting the name of characters (Irene Holmes being called Irene Adler later), and just a lack of actual plot. I will say that if you want to read this, to have more modern Greek myth works in your library, please read; but I will say I did not enjoy reading this piece.