The Goddess Test by Aimée Carter

I was excited about The Goddess Test from the moment I first heard about it. The myth of Persephone and Hades has always held a certain fascination for me, and I enjoy reading adaptations of it and seeing what different authors do with the story. In Aimée Carter’s version, Persephone left Hades some time ago and Hades needs a new queen to help him rule the underworld. The queen candidates must first pass a series of tests, however, and someone keeps murdering the young women before they can complete the tests.

Enter Kate. She has felt set apart from other teens for several years, ever since her mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Now Mom has one last wish: to die in the small town of Eden, Michigan. Kate isn’t too keen on living in the boonies, but she’ll do anything for her mom, so move they do. Then a classmate plays a prank on her that go... Read More

Goddess Interrupted  by Aimée Carter

I read Aimée Carter’s The Goddess Test last year and was disappointed in it, but saw enough potential in Carter that I was curious about the sequel, Goddess Interrupted. As it turns out, it’s better than The Goddess Test in one major way, but has problems of its own. Overall, they come out about equal and I’m giving them the same star rating.

The biggest problem with The Goddess Test was its bowdlerization of the Greek gods. Carter had rendered the gods nearly unrecognizable by making them believers in a strict Christian morality. Here, she fixes that to a large extent. The gods’ lurid histories are restored to them. It’s just that, as Aphrodite puts it, they have a tendency to be self-righteous. For this mythology geek, they’re much easier to stomach as hypocr... Read More

The Goddess Inheritance by Aimée Carter

Aimée Carter’s GODDESS TEST series has always been a bumpy ride for me, with its sometimes baffling take on Greek mythology and its focus on petty bickering even in the face of potential worldwide catastrophe. Yet I always felt there was enough of a seed of a good story here that I wanted to see how Carter would finish it out, so I decided to read the final book, The Goddess Inheritance. I’ve now gotten a little over halfway through the book and am giving up. I’ve decided I simply don’t care anymore.

We pick up as Kate is on the verge of giving birth in captivity — having been kidnapped by Calliope and Cronus at the end of the last book — and the other gods having just realized she’s actually missing. Then she does give birth, in the most Mary Sue manner one can imagine, i.e. with none of the commonplace annoyances that come with childbirth. Labor only lasts a few mi... Read More