Customer Reviews

Fatal Attraction: Aphrodite's Tale

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I randomly bought this book at a store for $1, thinking it was a romance novel. Really, it's a great book, I like the fact that Aphrodite develops as a character, and that she seems to learn from her past experiences. I also found it very descriptive, the image it portrays of ancient Greece is lovely. The tone of the writing is very similar to the feeling of the heat, water, and magic in the remote islands of Greece today. I liked that the author took the basic stories of the Gods/Goddesses and used her imagination to show us another possible way things could have unfolded.

Fatal Attraction is a re-telling of the story of Aphrodite, and Troy, and Eros and.... Very much like its predecessor, Love Underground: Persephone's Tale: (The Goddesses #1) (The Goddessess Persephone's Tale).

I enjoy the retelling of the myths, giving the gods & goddesses personalities, but there's no focus at all to this story. It just rambles on, goes off on tangents... and then stops.

It's like driving around looking at fall leaves. It's a pleasant enough trip, but you don't get anywhere.

Alicia Fields is a gifted writer, but book 2 in the Goddesses series didn't measure up to the first one. This novel focuses on Aphrodite, the goddess of love. As the purpose of Field's books are to portray ancient greek and roman goddesses as human beings, this Aphrodite is a carefree, beautiful siren. She spends her life seducing men and boys, starting as young as age 7. She dallies with dozens of men, all the while oddly attached to her adopted brother Ares, who jealously and sometimes violently declares she is "his". When she gets herself pregnant at age 15, her adoptive parents Zeus and Hera take her baby away and force her to marry her crippled half brother, Hephaestus. From there, it all goes downhill. Most of the novel is fluff based on Aphrodite's "romantic" escapades. Once she is married, she treats poor, kind Hephaestus like dirt, even though he is wonderful. Ares leaves and then reenters the picture and then leaves again, with no real role. Aphrodite is pathetic and self centered, unintentionally helping start the trojan war by introducing her pal Helen to Paris. The book lapses from ridiculous romantic antics to Aphrodite as an older woman, acting like a harpy and annoying the heck out of her poor son Eros, whose father is a mystery. Although mildly interesting, I would not recommend this book to a die hard mythology fan.

The book spanned a lot of time, which I think was necessary to really show the full spectrum of Aphrodite. She really didn't find true love herself until much later in life, although she went looking enough for it. I enjoyed the book, but did a lot of crying... growing up is hard to do, even for the Goddess of Love.