Lore

Every seven years the Agon returns, and the descendants of the great heroes of ancient Greece battle each other as they race to gain immortality.  As punishment for their cruelty to humanity, Zeus cursed the original major Olympians to become mortal every seven years for seven days.  A hunter who kills a god during that time gains that god's power and immortality at least until the next Agon when they are among the hunted.  

The Agon is starting again, and Lore wants nothing to do with it.  Seven years ago, her parents and younger sisters were murdered, and Lore has spent the years since then trying to get out of the eternal hunt for glory and live a normal life, but this time the Agon is in New York, Lore's city.  She has spent the last few years as a caretaker to an older man named Gil who taught her to be gentle with herself and best friend to Miles.  They all lived together in Gil's brownstone until he died leaving everything to Lore.  Now it's just Lore and Miles and her grief.

Despite her efforts to make a new life for herself, Lore is dragged back into the Agon when she comes home one night to find Athena, one of the original gods, bleeding on her doorstep.  Athena offers Lore a deal.  They will make a binding oath to work together to end the Agon once and for all.  Wrath, the new Ares, is waging a bloodthirsty battle through the Agon, killing gods and claiming hunters to his army through fear and intimidation.  Once a god is killed by another god, that power is gone forever, and Wrath wants to be the last god standing.  Wrath is the god of war and bloodlust, but Athena is his counterpart, the goddess of rationality and just wars.  She wants to kill Wrath and end the Agon by being the last god standing herself.  She needs Lore's help because as the last of the Perseides, Lore is the only one who can wield or gift the Aegis, a powerful shield created by Zeus.  Lore is sceptical of Athena's motives, but she has her own reasons to want Wrath dead.  Despite all the work she's done in the past years, she still longs for vengeance against the man responsible for her family's death.

Lore has another unexpected ally, her childhood best friend Castor.  The last time she saw him, Castor was dying of leukemia, but now he's back.  He's powerful, strong, and the new owner of Apollo's power.  Castor doesn't remember how he killed Apollo during the last Agon, but he has inherited the god's abilities so it must be true.  

Convincing her allies not to kill each other will be battle enough, but striking against Wrath and nearly all the rest of the hunters will be even more difficult.  As Lore races to save the world from the dreadful and destructive rule of Wrath, there will be plenty of dark twists along the way, and Lore will never be able to predict who will be her enemy or her ally in the end.  

This new book from Alexandra Bracken sounds promising.  I was excited to read it because I love Greek mythology, but it just wasn't as good as I wanted it to be.  There is so much casual violence and gore that it was difficult for me to stick with it.  I struggled to read more than a few chapters at a time.  I know the original myths are violent, but they aren't nearly this descriptive.  The first few chapters were also very confusing.  I had no idea what was going on or why for quite a while.  There were big twists and shocking reveals, but they felt rushed.  Even the conclusion of the book didn't really get the weight it deserved.  In some ways, this felt like the conclusion to a series or at least a companion book instead of a stand-alone novel.  There was so much backstory just crammed into a paragraph here and there which meant character choices and relationships didn't carry the weight the author wanted them to have.  I also wanted more from Athena's perspective to really make her character arc more meaningful.  I didn't hate it, but I also didn't love it, and the gore factor was a real turn off for me.