Review: The Games Gods Play

The Games Gods Play by Abigail Owen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

With the hot trend in publishing right now being "romantasy" (a twee, overly cutesy contraction of "romantic fantasy," at least in my opinion), I've cautiously dipped into some of these books. The 800-pound gorilla in this room is, of course, Rebecca Yarros' Empyrean series. I happen to have all three books--although I picked them up at my library's used book sale for $5 apiece, including the latest, Onyx Storm (and I got that one when the hold list at the library was still 50+ people long, which maybe says something about the quality of the third book?). I've read two of the three, and I will just say...I like the worldbuilding and love the dragons, and let's leave it at that.

This book dips into the classical fantasy end of the spectrum, with the setting of Greek gods existing in our modern world (they even have cell phones and an honest-to-God group chat). Every hundred years they run a dangerous Survivor-type game they call the Crucible, which involves the thirteen top gods of the Greek pantheon picking mortal champions to compete and fight against (and maybe kill) each other to determine the next King or Queen of the gods. In this Crucible, there is a completely unexpected entrant--Hades, King of the Underworld. He has chosen an unassuming and seemingly unqualified young woman, Lyra Keres, to carry his banner. This story depicts the Crucible from beginning to end, with all its secrets, lies, and manipulations, coming both from the gods and the contestants.

It's definitely more on the "-antasy" side of the spectrum, which is a good thing, to me. The romance here, despite the fact that the entire story takes place over roughly a month, is of the slow-burn variety, and thus has more emotional heft than, say, Fourth Wing's Violet and Xaden. This is due to the superior characterization of both Hades and Lyra, and also the side characters, her rivals in the Crucible who gradually become her friends. Lyra has a lot of stuff to work through in this book: she was cursed by Zeus at birth to be "unlovable," and as a result not only does she have no friends and no one has ever been romantically interested in her, her self-esteem is in the basement. Her character arc involves learning to let people in and accepting her own strengths. Hades, on the other hand, while starting out as a typical and somewhat cliched arrogant little Greek god-snot, begins to show his emotions and his vulnerability, especially where Lyra is concerned. Yes, he has ulterior motives in choosing her for the Crucible, but he finally comes clean about it at the end and Lyra knows the stakes. (And of course the shocking twist in the final pages not only guarantees a second book but shows Hades threatening to burn down the world to save Lyra.)

(The only thing that took me out of the story a bit was the big Hades-Lyra sex scene. Yes, you can have--and you only need--one steamy sex scene per book, Rebecca Yarros! This particular one, though, struck me as being a bit unrealistic, as the fact that Lyra is an untouched virgin--she's never even been kissed!--is emphasized more than once. And yet when the time comes for Hades and Lyra to finally get together, her lack of experience and her possible pain, bleeding, awkwardness and trouble climaxing is not even mentioned. That should have been a good conversation for the two of them to have that would have deepened their characterization. It felt very much like a missed opportunity.)

Nevertheless, this book strikes me as a better example of the genre than some others I've read (to be honest, I think I'm only keeping the Empyrean books around for the world and the dragons, not necessarily the humans). Yarros' books have superior worldbuilding, I think, but the characters here are better developed. Now let me find a romantasy author that does well at both, and shows restraint when it comes to the sex scenes, and I'll be satisfied.

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