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 him? He comes off as rather piggish in myth, and none of that is really dealt with except for a few offhand comments about how he’s not the same guy anymore because his love for Pamela has changed him. In under a week? I doubt it. It’s just, BANG! he’s a nice guy now, without a single iota of his former personality resurfacing. At least Hades, for all his brooding darkness, always seemed in the stories to actually love his wife. And the angsty aspect of his personality was also a plot point in the novel, and an obstacle to his relationship with Lina. Here, Apollo is perfect beyond belief. I also can’t really buy Artemis as a promiscuous blonde bombshell.
And the ending seemed wrong, too. Let’s just say, for fear of spoilers, that the characters seemed a lot less interesting at the end, particularly Pamela.
COMMENT Book #3 of this trilogy is very much a heist story, and I quite enjoyed it!
Pirate stories and heist stories... Do we ever get enough of them?
Very interesting, Ulrich! Thanks for clueing me in!
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