This was far from my favorite of the series but also not at the bottom. Still, the series has run out of steam and it’s time to wrap this up so it’s good that this one is second to last. To be honest, when I look back at the series, I am not sure any of the ones that have come after the third book (Helen, Achilles and Patroclus) have had me nearly as invested in the romantic leads as the early novels.
This one focuses on Zeus and Hera, or Perseus and Callisto. Both of them have been in the series from the beginning, with Perseus/Zeus being the son of the first novel’s original villain, and Callisto being Persephone’s oldest sister. After the second book, they ended up in a political marriage. Callisto always hated Olympus and as Hera, she started plotting her husband’s death. This is the one where we get to see two very powerful people go from hatred/marriage of convenience to love.
And it’s all fine. I still like Zeus/Perseus more as a character than his wife, his motivations and development have always made more sense. Hera has come off as smart and calculating when at a remove but so much of what we see here when we get her perspective is that she is reactive and makes some pretty bad judgments. Both have shields and walls up due to childhoods in politically fraught Olympus under ambitious parents.
The main flaw for this one is that after all the build up to get here, the novel was surprisingly quick and short, and the way the characters act, their motivations and insecurities feel like a retread of earlier characters in the series; Roberts is also focused on set up for the next novel so we get a third character POV with Hermes even though she isn’t part of the relationship (some previous novels had more than two POVs but those books were about triads and other polyamorous relationships). So not only is the novel shorter, Zeus and Hera also have to share page time with Hermes (granted Hermes was one of the more engaging and mysterious characters early on in the series). While Zeus and Hera don’t get along, they also have a sexual charge so have been having sex their entire marriage, and now Hera’s pregnant. It kind of annoyed me, it feels like it was a way to explain why the character might soften after all this time. I would have liked to see an enemies to lovers version of this story that wasn’t eased by pregnancy.
One of the things I enjoyed early in this series was the larger storyline and the idea that there was more going behind it all. In some cases, that part was almost more engaging than the couples involved. But once we started giving more screen time to Minos and his family, and also found out the real mind behind the plot, it stopped being interesting. It all just became too big of a political mess, too high stakes, and I felt it here, too. There’s not quite enough Zeus and Hera but I honestly don’t give a shit anymore about what happens to the city. And yes, I will read the final novel, of course.