I’m not sure how to rate books on this website, so I suppose this will be going in a comment instead.
This book is absolutely phenomenal. It’s so refreshing when a sequel truly feels like it is upping the ante. An expansion on characters and sects that weren’t focused on in the previous book but were eluded to. The rest of the pantheon receive a lot more attention and I found Hera and Athena to be the most interesting with their goals and motivations.
Persephone and Adrastus are both so compelling in the way that their clashing with godhood, directly or otherwise, builds them through the story as mirrors to each other. I feel that their individual relationships to Demeter are the most obvious examples of this.
The addition of Callisto Khan to Maria Ying is fantastic. I am not versed much in Greek theater, but seeing Elektra and Titanomachy (play titles mentioned in Callisto Khan’s own The Zeus Constant) was a delight and it feels like a natural evolution after the poet Sappho appears in The Hades Calculus.
I’m a massive fan of how Maria Ying has responded to the number of works based on this series, the canonization of Madalithea from Cirice Gray’s Flower of the Underworld along with elements from the previously mentioned The Zeus Constant is extremely cool. I’m not great at coming up with another way to put it, it’s just something I wish happened more often. A part of me wonders how these elements might read to someone who hasn’t read either of those books, and how much Maria Ying wants them to be enjoyed without requiring supplementary reading. I’d have to take notes about that on a subsequent reading, but my mention of it is not because I think it is a problem. Just something I mean to dive into.
I’m extremely excited for whatever the story may hold in the threequel, and yearn for the chance to read House of the Underworld when it releases. I got my second ever tattoo of a cypress leaf inspired by Hades and Madalithea. I love this series and I expect it to be near and dear to me for a long while to come.