Kate O'Hearn

This book isn't terrible, but it's quite frustrating. I think the problem is that I don't believe Freya -- I don't believe in her hatred for humanity that is so swiftly turned on its head, I don't believe in the hard and fast rules of Odin's world, because nobody else seems to believe in them, either -- there's a pretty huge amount of defiance on from all levels of his dominion, so it's hard to take the dire warnings seriously. There's a whole lot more tell than show, and it undercuts both the characters and the story.

Advanced Reader's Copy provided by Edelweiss.… (meer)

I am miles and miles and miles away from being obsessive and compulsive, yet I do have a completion-ist streak in me. That is the only excuse I offer for continuing to read this series of books. It isn’t that they are bad, or horrible. There is nothing Meyer-Twilight-horrific enough to keep me reading because I just can’t look away from the wrongness of it all. But at the same time, this is not a good book.
Action and adventure and flying horses. That’s why I read the first one. Why I read the second… well, it could have improved. It didn’t really, but it was more of the same. Enough to let me know that while this series of books was perfectly adequate for certain tastes, it wasn’t for mine. I like character. Well drawn characters. This does not have that.
It has a very simplistic plot and very simplistic characters. I don’t write that to knock the book. That is what it is aiming to be, I think and hope :) and there is nothing wrong with children’s books being just that. Of course the very best of children’s books have layers and complexity. This doesn’t.
It is a simple story, and it is told in an entertaining fashion. With battles and action galore. It has people standing up for what they believe in, occasionally they may not do the “correct” thing, but they try to do the right thing. So it’ll pass an afternoon, and I think that if I was a child this would be a book that I would love.… (meer)

As I said about the first book, this is a children’s book and is written for its market. Which means that it isn’t too concerned with character twists and darkness, or subverting genres, or any of that sort of thing. Instead it sets out to tell a story, an adventure story with some myth thrown in to the mix.

Emily used to be an ordinary New York school child, but now she is the Flame of Olympus, but her father is still in the hands of the evil CRU and she intends to rescue him, with or without Jupiter’s help. But she also has to worry about her new powers and her lack of control over them. She runs the risk of hurting the very people she is trying to help. And to cap it off the dangerous Nirads are back!

This is a quick and easy read. It is entertaining enough but it wouldn’t be a book I’d revisit. If I was a child though, well maybe :) It is full of action and there is rarely a dull moment, so it is very easy to just keep on reading until you suddenly come to the end, there isn’t a dull moment.

Plus, you know my previously mentioned weakness for horses (even if Pegasus isn’t really a horse).… (meer)