Goddess of Spring by P.C. Cast

I hesitated to read Goddess of Spring. I never did really get into P.C. Cast's first novel, Goddess by Mistake, and I love the Persephone myth and didn't want to be disappointed. But finally I decided to read Goddess of Spring — and liked it!

Lina, a baker from Tulsa, needs a miracle to save her bakery. She finds it in the form of a mysterious, mystical cookbook, which contains a killer pizza recipe — and an invocation to the goddess Demeter. Demeter is willing to help Lina for a price: Lina must trade places with Demeter's daughter Persephone and travel to the Underworld.

There, Lina masquerades as Persephone and meets Hades, the god of the Underworld, who is a hot Byronic sort of hero. The two begin to fall in love, but can their budding relationship survive both lovers' insecurities, o... Read More

Goddess of Light by P.C. Cast

Workaholic interior designer Pamela is on a business trip to Las Vegas. Reeling from an abusive marriage, she's hoping her heart isn't entirely dead yet. She accidentally weaves her desire for romance into a spell binding the goddess Artemis to her aid, and Artemis sends her brother Apollo to woo Pamela.

Apollo and Pamela fall in love, of course. I didn't think their relationship was developed as well as Lina and Hades' relationship in Goddess of Spring. It seemed more like Apollo and Pamela fell into bed a couple of times and then declared themselves soul mates. Besides, I can't see Apollo as a romantic hero. There is one point where Pamela muses about how Apollo isn't going to stifle her as her husband did. Hello? Burning Coronis to a crisp for cheating on him? Chasing Daphne till she had no choice but to turn into a tree? Punishing Cassandra for not wanting to sleep with h... Read More

Divine by Mistake by P.C. Cast

I was not able to finish Divine by Mistake. It flunked the Finish-able Book Test, which means that if I put it down for a couple of days and find no desire to pick it back up, I don't bother wasting my time.

Shannon, a schoolteacher from Oklahoma, gets zapped by magic into the mythical world of Partholon, where she ends up worshipped as a priestess, married to an attractive shapeshifter, and embroiled in a war with the truly nasty and evil Fomorians. I liked the premise. Unfortunately, the cover blurb was more interesting than the actual novel.

First of all, the mythology is sloppy as heck. I tried to get over this, accept that the book is a comedy loosely based on mythology, but it still bugged me that Cast can't keep her folklore straight. Priestesses of Epona are mixed with Greek-style nymphs and centaurs. The result is that the book ends u... Read More

Divine by Choice by P.C. Cast

Shannon Parker, Beloved of Epona and now living in the lap of luxury in Parthalon is suddenly pulled back into the modern world from whence she came. Summoned back by the mirror image of her centaur husband, ClanFintan, Clint Freeman a handsome and brave former Air Force pilot has been battling with Shannon’s evil twin Rhiannon.

But Shannon isn’t the only one who has been pulled out of Parthalon. The evil spirit of the demon Shannon helped to vanquish in Divine By Mistake, Nuada, has followed her into the modern world and is threatening her friends and family. Together with Clint Shannon must find a way to stop Nuada, Rhiannon, and the other evil forces that are keeping her from returning to the world she has come to love.

After the first few chapters of Divine by Choice, I was not holding out much hope for the book as a whole. The... Read More

Elphame's Choice by P.C. Cast

I think I'm just not meant to read P.C. Cast. Maybe I'm just anal-retentive; maybe I just have too much trouble shutting off the "mythology geek" section of my brain. I crack open a Cast novel, and instead of sinking into the story, I find myself thinking, "Celtic mythology doesn't have centaurs," or "Apollo would make a lousy Prince Charming," or in this case, "Elphame's a place name, darn it, not a character name! It means fairyland." Elphame's Choice is so called because its heroine is named Elphame, and this never quite stopped being distracting.

Elphame is a descendant of the heroine of Divine by Mistake. She lives a cushy but lonely existence as the daughter of Epona's Chosen, and wants to strike out on her own and find her destiny. She finds it in the form of MacCallan Castle, which once belonged to her ancestors but was destr... Read More

Marked by P.C. Cast and Kristen Cast

Zoey Redbird used to be a normal teenager dealing with normal teenage stuff — boyfriends, school, parties — until the day she’s marked with a tattoo right in the middle of her forehead. This signifies her as a vampyre and means that she has to go live in the House of Night, or she’ll die. Nobody knows what causes vampirism — it has something to do with junk DNA and it’s a physiological reaction to puberty hormones in some kids.

Zoey’s parents, conservative religious zealots who are more worried about what the neighbors will say than they are about how Zoey feels, are horrified by the mark. They call the elders of the Faith to come pray for Zoey, but she sneaks out and runs away to the House of Night. There she learns about being a vampyre, makes new friends and enemies, watches kids die when they don’t make it through the change, and discovers that she has extra special powers and a Destiny... Read More

Betrayed by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast

Betrayed is the second book in the HOUSE OF NIGHT series by mother/daughter team P.C. and Kristin Cast. In the first book, Marked, Zoey Redbird discovered that she’s a fledgling vampYre, went off to vampyre boarding school, defeated Aphrodite (the beautiful stuck-up popular girl) and her minions, became the most popular (but not stuck-up) girl and set up her own minions friends in a position of power where they will rule the school justly and benevolently.

In this second installment, we find Zoey trying to recast her in-group (called the Dark Daughters) into a peer leadership group (not sure why she doesn’t start by changing the name). As Zoey is in the school library scouring the internet for sample charters, she meets Loren Blake, an adjunct teacher who is even more gorgeous and mysterious (he writes poetry by mo... Read More

Chosen by P.C. and Kristin Cast

Chosen is the third book in the HOUSE OF NIGHT young adult paranormal romance series by P.C. and Kristin Cast. Don’t start here if you haven’t yet read Marked and Betrayed. But, actually, I don’t recommend that you start anywhere unless your tastes run completely contrary to mine (which is, of course, quite possible and utterly understandable). I got the series on audio from Audible and my library and at this point, frankly, I’m just reading them so I can get them reviewed for FanLit. I’m not enjoying them. So, let me just tell you why and you can perhaps determine whether you’ll feel differently. Obviously, many people do because HOUSE OF NIGHT is popular with the YA demographic.

Okay, so in this installment, Zoey has figured out that her mentor Neferet is actually her nemesis while Aphrodite, who Zoey thought was her nemesis, is... Read More

Untamed by P.C. Cast

Untamed is the fourth book in P.C. and Kristen Cast’s HOUSE OF NIGHT paranormal romance series for young adults. I haven’t enjoyed any of the books so far and I nearly gave up on them halfway through the previous book, Chosen. However, I keep soldiering on because I’m downloading them for free from my library and they’re so silly and fluffy that it’s possible to listen to them with only 1/4 of my brain, freeing me up to do some serious multi-tasking while listening. Also, I really want to get them reviewed for FanLit. I mean, that is one of our site’s goals — to read bad books so you don’t have to.

OK, so in my review of the last book, Chosen, I gave a long list of complaints. I wonder if many previous reviewers have given the same list because, it’s really weird, but Cast actually fixes a lot of these problems in Untamed!

As j... Read More

Hunted by P.C. Cast

This one was so bad that I don't even want to write about it.

It's got all of the previous problems and more.

Zoey and her boyfriend issues are insufferable.

I'm done with this series.

Yuck.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


House of Night — (2007-2014) with daughter Kristin Cast. Young Adult. Publisher: The House of Night series is set in a world very much like our own, except in 16-year-old Zoey Redbird’s world, vampyres have always existed. In this first book in the series, Zoey enters the House of Night, a school where, after having undergone the Change, she will train to become an adult vampire — that is, if she makes it through the Change. Not all of... Read More