Gods Behaving Badly - Marie Phillips

I read this once before, several years ago now, and found it funny enough to remember it. So when I was combing through the e-library's offerings recently, I found this offered in audiobook format (although not in e-book) so I wishlisted it. I was intending to marathon my way through a game (gotta get those achievements~!) and I wanted to listen to something that was not the game's background music, so I played off the first audiobook available and it happened to be this one.

 

Anyway, first time listening to a female narrator, so that was a nice change. Her accent was British but the novel was set in London, so that wasn't a deal breaker, despite the cast being mostly made of Greek (or Roman) gods. It is a bit graphic in some parts but... in a bitterly funny sort of way. The main gods of the story are Apollo and Artemis, with supporting roles from the remaining big 12 Olympians, plus minor deities here and there, such as Eros (who is, by the way, an adorable character). The story actually revolves around two mortals who are painfully, boringly even, normal.

 

Pokes fun at modern habits and such, an interesting line of theological thought in the vein of Neil Gaiman's American Gods, Eros is too freaking adorable with his "What would Jesus do?" crisis, Aphrodite is freakishly reminiscent of the villainess Mother Gothel in Tangled (maybe it's the voice? Or the sinister motherly tone of voice used by the narrator?), Alice is such an uninspiring heroine that I can't help but like her.

 

I wish this book would be read alongside the mythological components required in public education because it makes it so obvious how the Olympians were/are such colossal jerks in a way that doesn't really come across when you read, say, the Iliad.