Takes the fun out of a fast paced book to keep having to check names and people but Lore is a BA. Book club April ‘24

Loved it, one of the few books I read recently that I couldn't set aside

Positives. The concept for "Lore" is fantastic; the continued ever repeating cycle of rulers dethroned by subjects and houses that hold onto cruel traditions to have a shot at killing a god... But in practice, it was a bit of a mess. I liked some of the twists, such as spoiler 

Gill being revealed to be the original Hermes (even if his motivation for taking Lore and Miles in was very unclear and he should have been reinstated as a god for his actions).

Unfortunately, this novel was too ambitious, leaving a lot of plotholes to be filled. 

Negatives. In spite of the intriguing worldbuilding, New York feels empty. If you're going to set your story in New York, write about New York! If your character has fallen in love with this city, make us fall in love with it too! 

Rather than telling a cohesive story, it felt like the characters went from side quest to side quest which made this (500+ pages!!) book loose its tension. Relevant information was also only brought up as soon as it was relevant for the plot which took away all the fun of trying to guess where the story would go next.  

TLDR; 
Not the most amazing/mind-expanding novel but it is an enjoyable YA read that helped pass the time with its quick moving plot and respectable amount of action. I liked the overall idea for the book and its execution, along with the variety of settings and  morally grey characters.

Summary: 
Essentially Lore is dragged back into the Agon which comes with severe consequences to her life and her loved ones. As she fights to survive, she battles the compelling force she feels to seek revenge while trying to preserve her humanity and discover the truth about herself and her destiny.

Comprehensibility: The novel does not contain any difficult vocabulary and with the urban setting and style it is easy to understand. There were time jumps back and forth from 7 years in the past to the present and these time skips were placed with careful consideration - The significance of the events 7 years ago line up with present-book information   for small moments of aha revelation. There are also references to months in the past before the Agon starts so there is quite a nicely developed timeline of events. There’s a reference guide to the characters at the back of the book as well as a list of the bloodlines of the Agon in the front which came in handy. I wish I knew about the character guide at the back before I finished the book already but oh well. However I became confused about some of info a couple of times. I am not sure what specifically made it difficult for me personally, but perhaps it is the fact that during these retellings of past “historical” events in this world, the characters are not explicitly specified ex. there are two male characters but their names aren’t used enough so I get mixed up when I see the word “he”. The context is there to deduce the subject, but sometimes my understanding is lacking and I can’t immediately identify it. 

Pacing:
The book spans over a 1 week period. Therefore many pages are spent describing the events that occur in only a span of a day. Despite this, the book was engaging and moved quickly for me because there was constant action. 

Plot: This is a plot heavy book so there is always something in motion and I was never disinterested. I’m not going to spoil specific details. Lots of fighting scenes and planning for fighting scenes. The plot is honestly extremely chaotic in that the characters would plan for something, and then during the plan, an unexpected event would occur and it would follow that plot point until I didn’t know where it was going. Each of these unexpected events helped to reveal important information so there was a reason for it at least. But often I would think these derailed events were conveniently written on the author’s side and not always reasonable…it would have flowed better otherwise. Did I predict some stuff? Yes. Did it ruin it for me? No.

Characters: With it being plot-centric, we don’t get to see too much of a transformation of characters but Lore does kind of change? It’s very complicated. Throughout the book she discovers elements of her past that reshape her reality & in the end she controls her temper and sacrifices what she wants for the greater good. She’s the narrator for the book (1st person) and I appreciate her consistent personality and the author’s ability to write a character across  time periods. Castor is a lovely character, just purely kind and caring. Evander and Miles along with Lore and Castor kind of formed the dream team resistance force against Wrath, and their personalities were unique and balanced each other out. With all the action there wasn’t much time for character building dialogue, but the dialogue that was there met the banter quota and it was refreshing. 

A dark, grim re-imagining of Greek mythology which explored the brutal side of both the godly, immortal figures and the plain old humans with their burning ambition. The plot was intriguing; watching the characters unravel thread after thread and often ending up with more questions than answers. The full cast of characters were well-developed, though frustratingly bad decision makers (someone had to advance the plot, l suppose). The ending felt slightly rushed,

and a bit jarringly sunshine-and-rainbows compared to the previous fifty-odd chapters

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