Goddess Review

Author: Josephine Angelini
Title: Goddess (Starcrossed Trilogy)
Published: 05/28/2013
Good Reads-
After accidentally unleashing the gods from their captivity on Olympus, Helen must find a way to re-imprison them without starting a devastating war. But the gods are angry, and their thirst for blood already has a body count.

To make matters worse, the Oracle reveals that a diabolical Tyrant is lurking among them, which drives a wedge between the once-solid group of friends. As the gods use the Scions against one another, Lucas’s life hangs in the balance. Still unsure whether she loves him or Orion, Helen is forced to make a terrifying decision, for war is coming to her shores.

In Josephine Angelini’s compelling conclusion to the masterfully woven Starcrossed trilogy, a goddess must rise above it all to change a destiny that’s been written in the stars. With worlds built just as fast as they crumble, love and war collide in an all-out battle that will leave no question unanswered and no heart untouched.

Review:

Surprisingly, Goddess is my favorite the Starcrossed Trilogy. The first book wasn’t all that I imagined it could be, the second came crashing down on all my expectations, and finally Goddess was the refreshing read I was hoping it would be. I’m kinda at war with myself, because I equally loved and hated the Trojan War theme, plot, whatever. Basically the characters from the start of the Starcrossed Trilogy are trapped within the Fate’s cruel joke of rewriting history. Every generation there’s a series of characters (or “faces”) that are spread out within a group of Scions. Helen of Troy, Paris, Hector, the whole team that are mentioned in The Iliad, as the Fates wait and wait for the day the Scions overthrow the Gods. Just as the Gods overthrew the Titans and so on and so forth, and it just so happens that the Tyrant (a.k.a Godoverthrower) has arrived and is ready to hash out some Godly timeouts. Now here’s the low down on what happens, blah blah this review contains spoilers of the first two books, don’t clicky clicky if you haven’t read-y read-y.

Let’s see if I can remember this all, alrighty so now that the Furies are taken care of, things begin to flip upside down and over again. The houses are united, and the Tyrant is among them, who it is, no one really puts it together. Although now some majorly important things need to go down in order for everyone to try and not, you know, start another war and kill off all the Scions into extinction. Basically no one knows who to trust, Orion, Helen, and Lucas are all being pulled from different directions. The Gods just want to shut them down, and sides begin to be taken. Actually, what I think is funny is that it wasn’t just Gods against Scions, it was Gods, against Scions, and Scions against the traitors that include a few family members and friends of Helen and the gang. (Well it was half of the gang.) I love that Goddess had some demigod action in there finally, less “I love you Lucas but I shouldn’t and I don’t know why!!” and more Gladiator fighting! We’re talking about some old school hand to hand combat here, with some giant swords and fancy footwork.

Here’s the bad part, anyone who has so much heard the story or read The Iliad can basically predict what’s going to happen. If that weren’t bad enough Helen ends up with the original Helen’s memories, and a few other Helen look-a-likes. So if you thought you know what would happen just because you’re a Greek Myth freak and like totally read The Iliad like, a million times already and have it, like, memorized, and OMG Homer is like, the bomb at writing Epics. Well, yeah it because even more predictable now that Helen is “remembering” what really happened. I want to say this book has a lot of foreshadowing, but that would be tap dancing an Abby Lee Miller solo around the truth.

In the end, like I said, as predictable as Goddess was, it was a nice a good end. I mean, I realized I didn’t care for the characters when they were battling to their deaths and some of them do die, and I had no concern what so ever. What I hate though is just about everyone comes back to life in these books. Like seriously, a character will be dead through and through then “BOOM!” magic sparkles they’re ALIVE!! Time to shut down the sarcasm, Goddess scores 3.5 for me. I’m seriously praying though that there’s a spinoff about Orion and Cassandra, I’d love to see how their story continues being that they never got a chance to shine.