Customer Reviews

As Fate Decrees

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4 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Firstly I must say that I found this book to be an excellent read - The backstory to this book is on the back cover - The Oracle at Delphi tells Ares, Greek God of War, that a Champion of the Gods will be found by him in a lowly circumstance...I am glad for the backcover because there is only slight mention of Ares' being at the Oracle and fate playing a part in his life...
In the slaving areas of ancient Greece, a man comes and bids on a fiery girl that is being sold. No one dares bid against him. The slave's name is Amarantha, and her mysterious master begins a strict training course - she is to be a top warrior - What Amarantha doesn't know at first, her master is Ares himself.
When Amarantha finds a man dying on the road, he tells her he needs to deliver a message to the King of Corinth. Am delivers the message for him...only to find the king is a childhood love, Iphicles. Iphicles is the mortal twin of demi-god Heracles - whom we know better as Hercules.
Am, as she is called, stays with Iphicles, and eventually their childhood love is rekindled. There is much court intruige - each city-state vying for power over its neighbors.. After Iphicles' fate is sealed, Am returns to Ares.
Then the world shifts - to 1999 Athens Greece - Holy places are being destroyed all over the world. A group is setting out to rid the world of its many religions and set up one religion - one God for everyone - and if they destroy holy sites, the people will see this one group is more powerful than anyone else's religions.
A young anthropologist, Alexandra Christophi, is upset by the desecration of ancient ruins - she goes to a family friend at the Temple of Zeus, and we learn that there are still followers of the Greek Pantheon, and her friend is a priest there - Her fiance Nickolas, a cop, try to stop the devastation of national treasures...
It seems the world needs a Champion - there mixes two stories into one - Am coming to defend the Gods and Goddesses from these evil people.
Both tales, and how they merge are masterfully done. The mythology is excellent and the story of timeless love, and fealty to the Gods is amazing. Am and Ares are together until the Fates decree she is to go and champion them at another time...
There is a possibility of a sequel - that would be great - Ares and his now love, Amarantha are truly a story fit for the Gods.

In Ancient Greece, a woman named Amarantha finds herself as the next item up for sale in the Athens slave market. She is bought by a mysterious stranger who refuses to identify himself. He trains her as a warrior, and makes it clear to Amarantha that disobedience is a really bad idea. After her skills have been perfected, the stranger reveals himself as Ares, the god of war, and son of Zeus. She has been trained to be Champion of the gods of Olympus, to vanquish evil forever, until the gods say otherwise.

Sent into the world as a kind of traveling warrior, Amarantha runs into Iphicles, now King of Corinth. The two were very good friends, almost lovers, when they were younger. She stays for a while as one of his advisors, to the whispers of nearly everyone that their relationship is not exactly platonic.

While in another city also ruled by Iphicles that has been badly damaged by bandits, Ares tells Amarantha that Iphicles must return to Corinth, now. She can't tell Iphicles how she knows this, but when he finally listens to her and returns to Corinth, with Amarantha as part of the procession, the city has been decimated. There are many deaths, including Iphicles' queen.

Switching suddenly to present day Athens, Amarantha finds herself in the body of archaeologist Alexandra Christophi. This is not the first time that Ares has sent her elsewhere in time. This time, the enemy is a shadowy terrorist organization that has been bombing religious sites all over the world, including Macchu Picchu, the Vatican and all the religious sites in Athens. The object is to destroy all other gods and bring about the coming of The One True God. The gods of Olympus understand that their fate hangs in the balance. In the final battle, Amarantha/Alexandra is severely injured. Will the gods grant her the peace she seeks?

Here is a first-rate piece of writing. It's very readable, the characters are well done, and it is an interesting look inside Greek mythology. This gets two thumbs up.

This book is truly phenomenal. The mix of mythology with both historical and modern times is seemless. Ms. Bridger made me believe the Gods were alive and caring about what was happening today, to the point that Ares himself was here during the Millenia switch.

With a perfect pace, well developed characters and an intriguing storyline of a God's Champion who was once mortal and hand chosen by Ares himself, this story brings into it a depth and insight I have never thought of before.

The characters themselves jump off the pages and make the reader want to become a part of their lives. I cried and laughed with them, I ached and shared in their joys. They truly touched me as the reader, to the point that my dreams for several days included these characters.

This is a book that anyone who enjoys a great story should read.

I mean it manages to butcher history, mythology, and offend my senses as a woman. Our heroine is tragically sold into slavery by the brutal (yet handsome) Ares who trains her to become the champion of the gods (with a capital G, no less). The best part of this book happens in the prologue where Ares tells her to shoot a target on a ship, and she hits a sailor, and Ares tells her to keep shooting (which she does). Anyway, our tragic!heroine manages to wangst through loves that can never be, while Ares lets every man she wants die cruel deaths, and even lets her die a few times. And what do the gods need her for? To stop a mortal from becoming immortal around the Y2K time, where our heroine has to take over the body of another tragic character we feel nothing for. In the end, Ares manages to make the woman submit to him and she saves the gods (and evidently as powerful as Zeus is, he can't be arsed to launch a lightning bolt anymore).

I can kind of forgive it as the author mostly writes erotica, but I lambast all people involved for asserting this was ever a strong female character. She is objectified and molested and made tragic so that we feel bad for her, but we never empathize with her as a character, or any of the other characters for that matter. Bad story, bad characterization, this is mostly an excuse for a tragic!woman trained as a warrior (against her will) to dethrone Aphrodite and save the day.