Month: December 2013

Mythology Monday: New Years

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Did you know the New Year’s baby is an Ancient Greek thing? At the festival of Dionysus/Bacchus, a baby would be paraded around in a basket as a symbol of rebirth. There was lots of partying, plenty of drinking, and an overall good time to be had.

New Years hasn’t changed much. People forget, I think, that mythology can be a very modern thing. It’s still happening. Take New Year’s Eve as an example. It’s a ritual. A really fun, very positive, happy ritual. 😀 Now a days ini Greece, families turn off all the lights and reopen them to “enter the year with a new light”. After the fireworks show, they cut serve a New Year’s cake that has one coin baked into it that symbolizes luck to whoever gets it.

On New Year’s many people….

1) Go to parties
2) Make a wish at midnight.
3) Drink champaign
4) Believe that when the clock strikes twelve you get a clean slate
5) Set a goal for your future
6) Make a list of everything bad that happened in the last year and burn it
7) Count down and watch a giant ball, peach, or other large object drop or fireworks
8) Kiss that special someone
9) Believe that whatever you are doing at midnight is what you will be doing all year
10) Eat twelve grapes
11) Sing “Auld Lang Syne”
12) Reflect on the last year

What’s your mythology? Comment below with your New Year tradition 🙂

Thursday Review: Rot and Ruin series

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Blurb: In the zombie-infested, post-apocalyptic America where Benny Imura lives, every teenager must find a job by the time they turn fifteen or get their rations cut in half. Benny doesn’t want to apprentice as a zombie hunter with his boring older brother Tom, but he has no choice. He expects a tedious job whacking zoms for cash, but what he gets is a vocation that will teach him what it means to be human

I picked up the first Rot and Ruin book from a friend in my cohort a year ago. The book seemed standalone, and was pretty good, so when I saw the next two novels in the library, I grabbed them.

This series gets super dark. The world building is very similar to Walking Dead. Everyone comes back as a zombie when they die, but bites speed up the infection. And as in most post-apocalyptic zombie scenarios, the people are almost worse than the undead. Everyone lives in these secure settlements, but every now and then children go missing. Our protagonists discover theres a place called Game Land where children are given weapons and thrown at zombies for entertainment. Really, humanity just goes down hill from there.

These books were scary, and not just because of the zombies, but because the descent into the dark side of humanity, and the rage and fear that lives there, was realistic. If you like zombies, this series is a must read.

Mythology Monday: Brumalia

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Originally, Brumalia was a holiday intended to honor Cronus, Demeter, and Bacchus. Bacchus by some beliefs was another facet of Hades’ personality so I chose to use it in my book. It was typically held in November, which makes no sense because it was intended to celebrate the Winter Solstice. Some sources indicate that the festival lasted for weeks, so that may explain the date discrepancy.

Brumalia was full of prophesied, visions, and not surprisingly, copious drinking. It really sounds like a surprisingly typical holiday party. There was even kissing under mistletoe and holly themed decorations.

So why did I use it in my book? I felt like the Underworld wouldn’t celebrate mainstream holidays like Christmas, but they would celebrate something around the same time. Hades is pretty considerate when it comes to encouraging the souls to keep their customs. Choosing an ancient holiday makes sense because he’s ancient. The celebration is kept open enough to where the souls could interpret it however they want. The palace had a ritzy party, but Brumalia was celebrated all across the Underworld in different ways.

Thursday Review: The Black Parade by Kyoko M

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Blurb: One bullet is all it took to transform eighteen-year-old New Yorker Jordan Amador into the last hope for souls of the dead. However, it also transformed her into a cantankerous asocial waitress with a drinking problem.

Jordan accidentally shot and killed a Seer: a person who can communicate with ghosts, angels, and demons. Worse still, she did so on the eve of her own awakening, making her the last Seer on Earth with no one to guide her. As penance, God gives her two years to help one hundred souls with unfinished business cross over from Earth to the afterlife or she will go to Hell. Just as she approaches the deadline, Jordan finds her hundredth soul: a smart-mouthed poltergeist named Michael whose ability to physically touch things makes him distinct from her usual encounters with the dead. However, the deeper she delves solving his sudden death, the more she realizes something sinister is on the horizon.

With time running short, Jordan stumbles across a plot that may unravel the fragile balance among Heaven, Hell, and Earth. Her life is plunged into chaos as she is hunted by demons that want to use her valuable Seer blood to bring about the end of the world and discovers that these creatures have a frightening connection to her family bloodline. Plus, the budding romance between Jordan and Michael makes it harder for them to let go of each other so he can become part of the eternal black parade.

My Review:

I really enjoyed this book. It had fantastic character development and a plot that just kept on coming at you. In fact, I really felt like I read an entire series by the time I got to the end. Not in a bad way, the book is divided into three different parts, and the author completely could have split the story into a trilogy and probably expanded and done a few short stories as well instead of selling it as all one novel, so this was actually a surprisingly good deal. Each part had fantastic build up, great world building, and characters that kept you invested. I loved Jordan and Michael and actually, now that I think of it, all the minor characters. The villains were suitably evil and scary, and the final resolution was epic.

My only complaint was something I actually liked most of the time. This book is full of pop culture references. The ones I got, I loved, but there were times when I felt like I was missing something because I didn’t understand the reference.

Otherwise, a fantastic read. It’s urban/Christian fantasy, but I at no point felt like I was being preached at. I don’t think the book went as irreverent as Supernatural did with its angels, but it’s more along those lines then say…a Peretti novel. In a bookstore it would more likely be found next to Kim Harrison (and let me tell you, it ranks right up there with the Hollows, seriously, if you enjoy Urban Fantasy, give this book a try.) And while it’s not in the YA genre, I’m pretty confident any of my readers that enjoyed Persephone would enjoy The Black Parade. Give it a try. It’s completely worth the read.

Mythology Monday: Meet the Argonauts: Peleus Edition

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Peleus was one of Aeacus‘ sons. His mother was a mountain nymph. When he and his brothers Telamon (another Argonaut) and Phocus were out hunting one day there was a hunting accident, or possibly an argument that led to an “accident” and Phocus was killed. He fled the country to Phthia and got married to a woman named Antigone (not that one).

Peleus and Eurytion (Antigone’s father and another Argonaut) were out hunting one day and Eurytion ended up getting killed. If both hunting accidents were in fact accidents, I would at this point pray Peleus took a hint and stopped hunting. Seriously. Anyway, Peleus fled, again, and ended up losing a wrestling match against Atalanta at a funeral game he was attending with Acastus (yet another Argonaut) in Iolcus. Acastus’ wife (who I’m not naming here because her name varies so much depending on the myth) thought that was hot, so she made a pass at Peleus.

Peleus was disgusted and turned her down. Enraged, she sent a note to Antigone telling her that Peleus was going to marry her daughter, and Antigone got depressed and hung herself. Then she told her husband that Peleus tried to rape her. Her husband decided it was time for him and Peleus to go hunting.

So off Acastus and Peleus go on a hunting trip. Acastus stole Peleus’ sword and abandoned him in the woods with a bunch of angry centaurs. One of the centaurs, Chiron, said, yeah…we’re not getting in the middle of this, and returned Peleus’ sword, and allowed him to escape.

Peleus returned to Iolcus, dismembered Acastus and his wife, and marched an army between their dismembered limbs.

Now Peleus needed a new wife. He decided he wanted to marry Thetis, a sea nymph who is sometimes a Nereids and sometimes elevated to a sea goddess, but the problem was she wasn’t often in humanoid form so he enlisted the help of the old man of the sea, Proteus. They had a wonderful wedding, Poseidon gave the couple two immortal horses and everyone was happy until Eris showed up. Apparently she hadn’t been invited, so brought a special gift. A golden apple. She offered the apple to the most beautiful goddess in attendance then watched Hera, Aphrodite, and Athena duke out who was the prettiest. This led to the judgement of Paris and the Trojan War. Fun times.

Sometime after the wedding, Peleus and Thetis gave birth to seven sons. One lived past infancy. Achilles. Thetis attempted to make her son impervious to harm by dipping him in the river styx, but she forgot a spot. The heel by which she held him. Or she pulled a Demeter and anointed him with Ambrosia then burned away the mortal parts of his body. We all know how that turned out.

Thursday Review: Glass Frost

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The Blurb: When joined together, Cinderella’s slippers grant the wearer her heart’s desire. But whose wish will be granted?

When Cinderella’s glass slipper is stolen, Queen Felicia sends her faithful steward Terrance to the real world to retrieve his love and witch-in-training, Bianca Frost. The power of the glass slipper in the wrong hands could ruin peace in Everafter. Bianca must gather every bit of magic she has learned in the past few weeks to find the slipper and protect her new love. Together, Bianca, Ming, Prince Ferdinand, and Terrance venture deep into the heart of Everafter to seek clues as to who has stolen the slipper and why. Along the way, they uncover what happened to the Seven Dwarves after Snow White married the prince, but also learn the awful risk of tampering with black magic and the high price that must be paid for magical aid, even when used for good.

Bianca and Terrance’s relationship is put to the test. Through the pain of suffering and loss, Bianca must determine if following her gallant boyfriend into his faraway world is in fact her heart’s desire.

My Review: Full disclosure. I’m a jerk. I begged my fellow Musa author Liz Dejesus for a copy of Glass Frost, and she was nice enough to send me an advance copy. So why am I writing a review months later? Life got crazy at the end of last semester and I am, just this week, caught up from being behind on an entire semesters worth of promotions and blogging and all that fun author stuff. Somehow this amazing book kept getting pushed to side in favor of my never-ending to-do list.

Not today!

If you haven’t read First Frost, and you like fairy tale retellings, go read it. It’s a cute book with an amazing concept. All the fairy tales are real? Well, yeah, that’s a given, but this is actually even cooler than that. All the fairy tales are real, AND there’s a fairy tale museum that has artifacts from all the original stories; A glass slipper, a lock of Rapunzel’s Hair, a brick from the house of the third little pig. And they sell Princess gear and have a story time. Liz, I’m telling you, open this museum. I will buy an annual pass and take my three year old there every day for story time.

What Bianca Frost, daughter of the owner of the museum, doesn’t know is that all artifacts are real and they are all magic.

Anyway, she figures all of that out in book one, so go read that book.

In this book, Bianca is back, along with her friend Ming and the handsome boys from Fairytale land. There was much more action in this book than the last one. Liz strikes this amazing tone between nostalgic fairy tale you might have heard as a child, and young adult romance. The story does land more on the young end of young adult, so rest assured, this book is a clean read.

The ONLY thing I didn’t like about this book, and I had to dig deep to find this, is the Ming thing. I love Ming. But if I was Ming’s mother, I would be furious with Bianca’s mother. Rose (Bianca’s mom) was not going to let Bianca go visit the Ever After because it was too dangerous. Bianca eventually talks her into it, and Rose lets her go on one condition. Her unmagical, completely defenseless (whose parents think is visiting disney land) human friend go with her. I think it would have raised the stakes and made for better tension if Ming snuck along.

But that is probably just the mom in me. I love that Ming is there. She grounds the story and frankly, I identify with the girl who got scared and went home more than the girl who faced impossible odds. I like and look up to Bianca, but I think it’s great that Liz provided us with a female character who isn’t weak, but isn’t death defyingly strong either. In a post-Buffy world, the “Strong female character” has become the norm. And while that’s great, and it sends a good message, not everyone is strong. Not everyone is THAT brave. And it’s okay. Ming isn’t a weak, shallow, or one dimensional character by any means. She feels like a real person. She’s still a likable character even.

I like that Bianca has parents and friends and a life outside of her romance. She may be in a fairy tale but she has a life too. If you like fairy tales, check out First Frost and Glass Frost. You won’t regret it.

Mythology Monday: Meet the Argonauts, Philoctetes edition

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Jason wasn’t foolish enough to go after the Golden Fleece alone, in fact, he brought pretty much every big-name hero of the time with him. The argonauts included Hercules, Boreas’s kids (hint, hint, this might be important in the next trilogy), Philoctetes, Telamon, Orpheus (SUPER hint hint), Castor and Pollux, Atalanta and Euphemus.

We’ve talked about Hercules and Orpheus in depth in other mythology Mondays, and there’s not much to know about the Boreads (children of Boreas), other than the fact that they can fly, that won’t be covered in the trip. They didn’t even get individual names. And many of the other 50 sailors accompanying Jason change depending on the source, but there were quite a few notable Argonauts. And I’d like to give them all a Mythology Monday.

So let’s talk about Phil. He was a young prince who was very good at archery. Also, he was human. His dad was actually the one recruited for the trip because he was also a legendary archer, but Phil tagged along and became famous. He and Hercules became special friends. Phil (or sometimes his father) actually lit the funeral pyre for Herc when he died, but then Herc became a god they all lived happily ever after. Except that this is Greek mythology, and no one gets to live, or be happy for very long. Herc moved on to Mount Olympus, but he did give Phil his bow and arrows.

Later Phil competed for the hand of Helen of Troy, but obviously he lost. However by throwing his hat in the ring, he pledged loyalty to whoever won. So when she was taken to Troy, he had to help attack it.

Well, bless his heart, he tried, but he ended up getting lost en route to Troy, and somehow hurt his foot, possibly by Hera sending a snake to bite him, possibly by Apollo sending a snake to bite him, possibly by Hercules’ ashes infecting his foot for beytraying their location (long story), or by an angry nymph, or possibly by a random snake. The wound festered and smelled and because the wound delayed his arrival to Troy, the Greeks exiled him on the island until they realized they couldn’t win without Herc’s bows and arrows, and guess who had them? They thought about just stealing the bow and arrows from Phil, then the newly deified Hercules came down from Mount Olympus to tell them in no uncertain terms that he did NOT approve of that idea, so they healed Phil’s foot and brought Phil AND the weapons back to fight Troy.

Well Phil was just the second wind the Greeks needed to turn the tide of the battle. Phil fought Paris, Prince of Troy, in single combats and in some accounts he was the one who killed him. He also hid in the Trojan horse and slaughtered many a Trojan.

Thursday Review: Seeds Volume 3 by M.M Kin

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Blurb: The lofty realms of Olympus and the once-fertile land of Hellas are in chaos due to the wrath of a mother gravely affronted. The truth, however unpleasant it is, must be faced. And in the Underworld, Hades must face the repercussions of his actions. Can Persephone ever forgive him?

Persephone must find a way to make her life her own, but that is easier said than done. Caught between two worlds, she will have to make a stand for her destiny…

My Review:
Great end to a great series. The third book is just as strong as the first two. M.M Kin created well researched, detailed settings, wrote fantastic descriptions, and wonderfully complex characters. In particular, the character of Persephone developed amazingly over this series.

She was everything I’d hoped she’d become in the first two books. She became this strong, no-nonsense character that MADE every guilty party answer to every wrong they’d ever committed and possibly some they’d only considered. She grew into her powers, her body, and her confidence. I *really* enjoyed watching all the other characters in this series squirm.

I also thought the very ending, when time moved forward (phrasing carefully to avoid spoilers) was a nice touch. Very interesting take.

The only complaint I have to add, and this really is just me because I happen to like these gods, were the depictions of Ares and Aphrodite. I felt like every other character got super in depth development, but they were both pretty one-dimensional (which in itself is not a problem at all. They are minor characters, actually like sub-minor characters, it’s okay for them not to be developed, sometimes the pizza man is just the pizza man, you know? And there are a ton of books out there that *really* could have improved by letting the pizza man just be the pizza man) But they were one dimensional unfriendly characters. Aphrodite was pretty and shallow, Ares was violent and blustering. I just wanted more to them. Mythologically, they’re fascinating. Aphrodite was pretty and confident and embraced her sexuality in an era that *really* didn’t encourage women to do that. Ares was the god of war, that pretty much never won a single fight, was dumb enough to get stuck in a jar for a year, and is one of *the* only (greek version only) gods who not only didn’t rape women, but actively hunted down and destroyed rapists. But, I know there’s more in the works in this world so there’s still hope to see some major depth from these characters. I’m absolutely going to read anything that’s put out in this universe, because M.M Kin is a research queen. I’m really excited to see where this goes next.

In short, this was everything I could have hoped for ending this series. I can’t wait to see where this author goes next.

Holiday Blog Hop: The Krampus

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Have you ever heard of the Krampus? It’s a Christmas story everyone should know for their own protection. Because…

He sees you when you’re sleeping,
he knows when you’re awake,
he knows if you’ve been bad or good
so be good….

Or Else

For over a century this menace to society has been breaking into homes at night, and apparently watching you sleep. Even mice are paralyzed in fear by his presence.

No it’s not Edward Culllen, it’s Santa Claus. Nowadays we are not bought off by his gifts, and our children know better than to take candy from strange men.

What can you do to protect yourself from this holiday horror? Follow the simple instructions below and you can enjoy a silent night.

1) Write a letter pleading for your life. Explain what makes you valuable to society and why you should be passed over. Better yet, have your kid do it. Santa may have a soft spot for children. It worked on the Grinch. You can send Santa and email, call him, post to his Facebook page, or twitter.

2) Be on the look out for his misunderstood twin brother Krampus. Every year on the fifth of December this deformed creature roams the Alps ringing bells and dragging rusty chains as a harbinger of Santa’s arrival. (Go on, google it).

3) Know his whereabouts. Modern science allows us to track Santas movements. Simply type Santa into google maps or google earth to find up to the minute details on his location.

4) Deck the halls with boughs of holly: M Night Shamalan taught us that the beasts do not care for the color red. Red of course is the most proven way to deter Mr. Claus, but science has proven any bright color will do. Pay special attention to your roofs as strings of lights sometimes have the unintentional benefit of getting tangled in his sled.

5) Light the fire and hang your old socks. The heat and the smell may be enough to frighten Santa away from your abode.

6) Leave milk and cookies. If it doesn’t slow him down it may eventually lead to diabetes, protecting future generation from this night of terror.

Good luck! And have a safe and Happy Holiday Season!

Comment below with your own fun and creative way to protect yourself from the Krampus this holiday season for a chance to win an e-copy of Persephone. Winner will be chosen December 16th.