I am in a bit of a slump, and this seemed passably interesting. The cover is pretty and Hoopla tells me it’s popular?
Set in the future, which, it must be said, sucks. Titans have emerged (from where?) to murder humanity, prompting Spartans (collective name for Greek Olympians) to reveal themselves after millennia in hiding in order to dispatch them. Spartans—you and I know them as Olympians-have their own internal conflict which forces the losing district (Chthonics) to serve as the Titan death squad.
Anyway, in a distant Montana trailer park, Alexis grows up with abusive foster parents. Circumstances go from bad to worse and Alexis and her brother are left with neither guardians nor a home.
Alexis pins her hopes for survival on passing a test given to all children of a certain age. To everyone’s shock, she’s revealed to be an abandoned Spartan. She’s whisked away to an arena to do battle with that year’s tributes. From this point, the book becomes a flywheel of physical and emotional abuse, dotted with thinly drawn bullies, some of whom are the romantic leads.
The book sells itself as dark or morally grey romance. That feels like a stretch. All wooing seems to happen in the heads of the characters.
Listen, the writing is not strong. For example, the main character experiences regular losses of time. It was not clear if she was jumping through time using some sort of superpower. It’s not; it’s just a literary attempt at a montage.
Alexis is a frustrating character. She’s desperate to go home to her little brother, yet she rarely thinks of him. She seems shy, but draws penises on her tests? Multiple characters insist on believing that she is hiding something, but she’s very obviously without a clue. And we have yet another “everyone has a power but me” hero who turns out just has a rare ability. (Which is maybe special, but it’s mentioned once and then never again.)
The author relies on alternate POV chapters to fill in blanks for the reader, but the confusion persists. There’s a half-hearted attempt at adding another layer of mystery/menace to the story that doesn’t really succeed.
But for all that, I finished it. So, there’s that?