Lore Olympus Vol. 5 (Episodes 103–126) by Rachel Smythe, continues the story of Hades and Persphone and delves deeper into Persephone’s past. Why did her name change from Kore (“Maiden”) to Persephone (“Bringer of Death”)?
It’s been an eventful two weeks (!) since Persephone came to live with Artemis, and she already has a lot of secrets. And those secrets are coming to light. After having to deal with paparazzi revealing her non-relationship with Hades and the gossips of Olympus, Persephone now must contend with more gossip—this time about her Act of Wrath.
The drama increases in Lore Olympus Vol. 5 and Hades and Persephone’s relationship is in danger of ending before it’s even begun.
Lore Olympus by Rachel Smythe is a contemporary retelling of the Greek myth of Persephone. In the original myth, Hades kidnaps Persephone and brings her to the Underworld to become his queen. She eats pomegranate seeds while in the Underworld, tying her to the place, so Zeus, Demeter, and Hades come to an agreement that Persephone will spend part of the year in the Underworld. While she is in the Underworld, Demeter is sad, and because she’s the goddess of the harvest, she does not allow plants to grow. This myth is used to explain the changing of the seasons.
In Lore Olympus, Hades sees Persephone at a party and falls for her, saying that her beauty rivals Aphrodite’s. Angry, Aphrodite arranges for Persephone to be blackout drunk in Hades’s car, to make her look like a mess and make Hades lose interest in her. Instead, Hades takes care of Persephone and in the morning returns her to home.
And thus begins a romance between a sweet cinnamon roll and a serious sad boy.
Lore Olympus is a slow-burn romance and modern reimagining of the myth of Persephone and Hades. It explores the relationship between the two gods in a contemporary setting in which the Greek pantheon has cars and cell phones, and tells the story of what might have happened if Persephone had met Hades under modern circumstances.
The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon is an epic fantasy of 800 pages that follows four point-of-view characters, Ead, Tané, Loth, and Niclays, in their journeys to discover secrets of the past and to once and for all defeat the dangerous and hostile fire-breathing dragon known as the Nameless One.
Ead is a sister of the Priory of the Orange Tree, a group of dragon-slaying women who eat the fruit of a special orange tree and gain magical powers called siden. Eight years prior to the start of the novel, Ead was sent to the Western queendom of Inys to protect their queen, Sabran. It is believed that Sabran’s lineage is the only thing standing in the way of the Nameless One’s return. Sabran, however, is reluctant to marry and bear an heir. While hiding her powers and her martial training, Ead must rise in the ranks of the household and protect Sabran from assassins and fire-breathing dragons.
Tané is a dragon rider of the East. Or at least, she hopes to be. After training her whole life, she takes her final tests to become a dragon rider with her fellow initiates. The dragons of the East are not fire-breathers; they are water dragons, and friendly to humans. Unfortunately, Tané breaks a cardinal rule before the start of the tests: she aids an outsider in entering the East from the West, which is forbidden due to the Draconic Plague that smolders in the Western countries. Tané must keep this secret while training to be a dragon rider, and when her dream finally comes true, it becomes even more important to her to hide what she’s done.
Unfortunately, she’s bet her freedom on Niclays. Niclays is a man from a country in the West called Mentendon who Sabran exiled to the East, and he’s a coward. As a young man, he had an affair with Duke Jannart utt Zeedeur, the love of his life and a married man, and Jannart’s death has haunted him for the rest of his life. Niclays helps Tané at first, by smuggling the outsider into the East, and he listens to the outsider’s story. The outsider from the West is Triam Sulyard, who has a message for the Eastern country Seiiki and the rest of the East: He has discovered that the Nameless One’s return is nigh and he wants to unite the West and the East against the great dragon. Niclays must decide whether to believe him or not, and whether to pass on his message.
And lastly, Loth is Lord Arteloth Beck, childhood friend of Sabran. Sabran’s spymaster Seyton Combe banishes him to the kingdom of Yscalin, which has recently turned against the alliance of Virtudom (the countries of the West) and now worships the Nameless One, to serve as a diplomat and spy. Neither of these things, Loth believes the spymaster has another reason: Rumors were swirling about the nature of Sabran and Loth’s relationship, blocking any attempt to find Sabran a suitor. Still, Loth is an noble man and takes the challenge head on. He must find out what was really behind the deaths of Sabran’s parents and why Yscalin bowed to the Nameless One.
All four characters share a common goal: defeat the Nameless One. The only thing standing in the way is the longstanding estrangement of the West and the East. And together, they must unite both sides of the known world to defeat the fire-breathing dragons, before it’s too late.
I read Winter’s Orbit by Everina Maxwell in 2021. It is part space opera, part romance, and it is lovely.
Ocean’s Echo by Everina Maxwell is another space opera in the same universe, but on different planets. Taking place in the Orshan three-planet system, Ocean’s Echo introduces two new types of neuromodified people: readers, who can read minds, and architects, who can control minds.
Tennal is a talented reader and a disaster of a human being. He moves from party to party, doing drugs and sleeping with mob bosses, living an aimless life away from his aunt’s prying eyes. After a conversation with his sister, though, Tennal is found out; his aunt tracks him down and forcibly brings him home to the city of Exana, where she conscripts him into the army to be forced into a sync with an architect. Which means the end of his freedom and his individual personhood.
The architect who is meant to sync Tennal and control his every move is Surit, who lives his life according to carefully ordered lists and a strict sense of right and wrong. And when he learns that Tennal was conscripted, he knows that it would be wrong to sync Tennal.
The two fake a sync and plan Tennal’s escape into the wider universe, away from Orshan, while the military is facing its own problems: an ensuing war between military factions. Readers are considered dangerous, but it turns out that mind control might be the more dangerous of the two abilities in this war. And Tennal and Surit have no choice but to become involved and stop the war before it hurts the people they love.
Scattered Showers by Rainbow Rowell is a collection of nine romantic short stories, including a story about my favorites, Simon and Baz from the Simon Snow series. Six of the stories take place in December, around Christmas or New Year’s Eve, a romantic time of year.
“Midnights,” originally published in My True Love Gave to Me (2014), is about two best friends, Mags and Noel, spending three consecutive New Year’s Eves at a party together. Noel kisses someone each night, and Mags wishes it was her.
“Kindred Spirits,” originally published in 2016 for World Book Day, is about Elena and Gabe meeting in a small week-long line waiting for the new Star Wars movie opening night.
“Winter Songs for Summer” is about a college girl named Summer getting over her breakup and meeting her downstairs neighbor Benji, who complains about her choice in music and makes her mix CDs to help her along with her breakup.
“The Snow Ball” is about Libby and her best friend Owen, who is getting ready for a school dance and a date with another girl. Libby and Owen are best friends, and they could have been more if Libby had said yes when Owen asked her to the dance the year before…
“If the Fates Allow,” originally published by Amazon in 2021, is about Reagan, a character from Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl, bonding with her grandfather’s neighbor during the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The Prince and the Troll,” originally published by Amazon in Faraway (2020), is about a young man named Adam who falls in love with a bridge troll over Starbucks.
Beth and Jennifer from Rowell’s Attachments make an appearance in this collection in “Mixed Messages,” which is about Beth’s struggle with her infertility and oncoming menopause.
“Snow for Christmas” stars Simon Snow and Baz Grimm-Pitch from the Simon Snow trilogy. Baz’s family invites Simon to Christmas, even though they absolutely abhor him and are in denial about Baz’s sexuality, and Baz struggles to make sense of the invitation.
“In Waiting” is a meta story that introduces two new characters—Anna and James. They are in a liminal space, waiting to be written into a story, and while they are waiting for “her” to write them, they fall in love.
The Oleander Sword by Tasha Suri picks up a little under a year from where The Jasmine Throne left off: Malini has gathered an army and is carving her way through her brother Chandra’s land, allies, and army, and Priya is back in Ahiranya playing the role of Temple Elder with her temple sister Bhumika as they work together to rebuild their country.
When Malini’s army faces a new threat—both to their lives and to Malini’s carefully built mythos—she calls for Priya’s aid, and Priya runs to her, leaving Bhumika to tend to Ahiranya.
But while Malini and Priya battle this new threat and try to take the throne of Parijatdvipa, another, older threat rises in Ahiranya. Bhumika is left to fight for the soul of Ahiranya on her own, and she must make sacrifices to save her country—and possibly the world.
Circe by Madeline Miller is the tale of Circe, a figure in Greek mythology. Daughter of the Titan Helios and the Oceanid nymph Perse, Circe is a goddess, a Titan and nymph, known best for her appearance in the Odyssey when Odysseus visits her island and she turns his men into pigs.
Miller’s Circe is a powerless, lonely child amongst her father’s halls. Her siblings bully her, and though she adores her father, he pays her no attention. Her mother is vain and loathes Circe, and so she grows up friendless; even when a new brother is born and she raises him on her own, he grows to treat her coldly as well.
Her life changes when she meets Glaucos, a mortal fisherman who is abused by his family as well. They fall in love and Circe, afraid to lose him to his mortality, uses magical herbs to turn him into a god. When his godhood leads him to disdain her and he falls in love with another nymph, Scylla, Circe uses more herbs to change Scylla into the monster most myths know her as. When Circe reveals that she transformed Scylla and Glaucos, Zeus sees her as a threat and banishes her to exile on Aiaia, a deserted island.
Trapped on an island by herself for three hundred years, Circe hones her witchcraft to protect herself from the gods’ wrath and meets many other mythological figures, including Odysseus, who changes her life once again. Now she must use her witchcraft to protect the ones she loves and to make a decision: whether to spend eternity as a goddess or to live with her beloved mortals as a mortal herself.
The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri weaves together a tale of politics, romance, and magic in a gorgeous fantasy world plagued by a mysterious magical illness and political unrest.
Malini is a princess whose brother the emperor condemned her to death by fire, and when she refused to burn, he exiled her to a vassal country, Ahiranya, to waste away in a temple made prison. Now it is her life’s mission to tear down her brother.
Priya is an Ahiranyi maidservant with a secret past and secret magic whose memories of her childhood are cloudy. She wants to know herself, so when Malini is imprisoned in the temple of Priya’s childhood, Priya volunteers to work in the princess’s household. Little does she know that meeting the princess will set her on a path to uncovering her past and gaining power in her future.
All the while, unrest is brewing in Ahiranya, and rebellion against the empire sparks and begins to burn.
A thief has stolen sea elf Sulaphraine’s voice and with it her magic, and Sula must travel from her ocean home to the surface world to get it back. With the help of an affable guard named Walter, Sula tracks down the thief across the land to a magical black market where her stolen voice might be used for ill deeds.
The Midnight Market by Miranda Wright is a short book, at 212 pages, but it’s packed full of action. Sula and Walter travel through several cities and towns in search of the thief, encountering yet more thieves, magical traps, and fae creatures. If you’re looking for a fun fantasy buddy cop novel, look no further!
Ivy Gamble is a private investigator with a secret: her sister Tabitha is a mage who teaches at a magic high school. They are estranged, but that’s about to change when Ivy is hired by the school principal to solve a murder that occurred on campus at the beginning of the school year. As Ivy acquaints herself with the campus and its characters, she searches for clues as to who killed Sylvia Capley in the school library. She begins to reestablish a relationship with her sister and discovers that Tabitha, too, is harboring secrets.
Lies and manipulations abound in Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey, a murder mystery which explores the secrets and tragedies that make us lie to each other and to ourselves.
El's Reading Journal 