Customer Reviews

Goddess By Mistake

5 star:		(41)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

"Goddess by Mistake" is really an R-rated romance with a fantasy overlay. The heroine, Shannon Parker is a high school English teacher who gets transferred to an alternate world where she is mistaken for the Voice of the Goddess Epona. She is forced into a ritual marriage with the centaur, ClanFintan (yes, a Celtic centaur) and together they set out to save their people from an immense horde of bat-winged vampire-demons who like to schlurp the blood of, and impregnate human women. (The scene where a woman gives birth to a vampire is a real gross-out.)

Shannon-Rhiannon (S-R) is a feisty heroine and her interior monologues are wickedly amusing. My only problem with her is that she is constantly ogling her scantily-clad guardsmen and her centaur-husband, who is (according to S-R) hung like a--well, he is half horse. S-R spends way too much time dressing, undressing, taking baths, picking out jewelry, panting after various males, and riding, umm, bareback. Her character too often lapses into one-dimensional vaudeville: a sort of 'broad' Benny Hill patter-routine (leer, leer. Snort.)

That one quibble aside, P.C. Cast writes like a dream and the school-teacher-turned-priestess's commentary on her new world is appealingly (and sometimes grossly) funny. There's not much of a plot in "Goddess by Mistake," but the zaftig dialogue will make you snort up your soda pop through your nose.

Not much in the way of being a critic, all I can do is give you my opinion of the book and it's contents. First I should tell you that although I do read well I'm not easy to keep attentive. It takes some really good writing and plots to keep me interested in a story to the point of wanting to stop everything and read it.

In "Goddess by Mistake" you are served up a very humorous and fanciful story with plenty of adventure and romance to keep anyone interested, even me! The lead character "Shannon Parker" gets teleported into an alternate world were there are people that are "mirror" duplicates of folks she knows. They are however living in a far different world and are in far different circumstances. Shannon's "mirror" double "Rhiannon" has just pulled a switcheroo on her and has changed places with her forcing her to live in this mirror world. Rhiannon is the "chosen of Epona" the goddess of horses and warriors and in our world has no powers but Shannon now has all of hers. They are not identical in any way though with Rhiannon taking liberties with her male guards and just about any other male she wants. Her "Bitchy" attitude causes Shannon no end of trouble. Shannon on the other hand is caring and thoughtful, always thinking of everyone else before herself but indulging in her favorite past time, red wine. Well, OK so she does have another but only with one male, her new husband who she had to marry once she arrived in her new world. The only problem is, he's a Centaur! And he bites. LOL!

Shannon does grow quickly to love him deeply and he her but I don't want to ruin the story for you.

P.C. Cast does what is hard to find today by allowing the males (both human and Centaur) to assume the roles that males assume best, being male! They are proud, testosterone filled brutes that have honor and virility. They make males look real good and there is nary a limp wrist in the bunch. I'd be proud to go into battle with any of them.

The females are also well represented. Phyl is generous with her descriptions of them and they play their role in a way that any male would love. She doesn't let the females step on the males toes (or hooves) in any way. They both compliment each other in a way that they once did in real life here.

By her own admission Phyl considered her book to be more of a "chick book" but after reading it I (very much all male) can tell you that men as well will love it. Phyl takes humorous swipes at men but always in a respectful way. She gives a really good insight into what women think about men but thankfully she doesn't do it in a viscious way. Her's is a "my own opinion" type of commentary that pokes fun at the differences between males and females but doesn't cause any injury for either sex.

Now for the Centaurs.

My first thought about this book was, "Are the Centaurs going to be stereotyped as the drunken, wild apparitions Ovid gave us all? That was not the case, instead they are honorbound, proud warriors and huntresses who have no contempt for human kind. They have wonderful senses of humor and will display it at the drop of a hat. I was not disappointed at all. She came through with flying colors. Her Centaurs are all that and then some. They are brave fighters that boldly defend innocent lives and give their lives for the safety of those they have charge over.

In a nutshell, this is one very exciting book and well worth the money and time to accuire. I have not in a long time sat up all night reading a book and losing track of time while doing it but I did with this one. When I got to the first battle with the Fomorians (the evil vampiric race or "The bad guys") I couldn't put the book down. I read all through the night until I finished the book, savoring every circumstance and situation. I was literally glued to the story like I haven't been in years.

I couldn't believe it when I stumbled into this book. I read it by accident, which is a funny irony considering the title. And, oh baby! was I pleased I did read it!

Shannon Parker is a hilarious English teacher from Oklahama who gets forced to exchanged places with a Goddess in an alternative mirror world where mythology is reality. The first thing that happens to her is she finds herself married to an amazingly handsome CENTAUR!! And whoo-hoo what a guy! I fell in love with him as Shannon did. The relationship between the two is believable, romantic and VERY, VERY hot!!

Then all hell breakes loose (almost literally). Shannon and her centaur lover (who can shapeshift into human form -- but you love him so much you DON'T CARE whether he's human or centaur) have to join the good guys against evil.

This book never stops. Shannon made me laugh and cry out loud.

I just want to know when the next one will be available!! I'm not done with Partholon!

I read GODDESS BY MISTAKE while on vacation in the green mountains of Vermont and couldn't have asked for a better setting. I kept looking up from the book to see if ClanFintan was galloping over the rise!

Ms. Cast's first novel is a refreshing new addition to the fantasy genre. Her characters are well written, her dialogue witty, and her story is filled with romance, adventure and fun. If you are a fan of Greek mythology and Celtic lore, then this fantasy romance is for you. English teacher turned goddess marries centaur in a land of magic and vampires!

I would disagree with a previous reviewer in their labeling of this book as an R-rated romance. Definitely PG with enough innuendo and good sense to let the reader's mind take it from there. A very nice change from the usual, overly descriptive boddice rippers that currently pack the bookstore shelves.

I'm very much looking forward to her next book, GODDESS OF THE SEA. October 2003 can't come fast enough!

When I first saw this book advertised, I liked the premise of it...it sounded like a hoot. I liked that the author was daring enough to try writing a romance in first person narrative style...what a refreshing change. I liked the idea of centaurs and goddesses and shamans and mythology and magical things. I liked that the heroine of the story was a 35 year old, not some fresh, nubile young debutante. And I liked the front cover art, which was classy, unlike those of most romance books. To my mind these were all good things, and after reading the book I still thought that they were good things.

However, there were a lot of things I didn't like. For instance, the heroine, Shannon. Sometimes she was likeable. But she was always cracking 'jokes' which she thought were absolutely hilarious (and naturally the author ensured that all the other characters always laughed along with her.) Sadly, though, she just wasn't as funny as she ought to have been, and sometimes she wasn't funny at all. In fact, most of her jokes consisted of her either complaining sarcastically about absolutely everything or making lewd double entendres worthy of an episode of 'Are You Being Served?'. And the timing of her 'humour' often stunned me. For instance, if you had just seen your father and a whole castle full of people cut to pieces by evil vampire assassins, or had had to collect dismembered bodies and put them on a funeral pyre, or had seen two thirds of your soldiers slaughtered in battle, or had watched a plague kill women and children, would you be making jokes and laughing within minutes? And not just joking but flirting and making out and drinking, too. Shannon accused her predecessor, Rhiannon, of being a sl*t and a b*tch, but she was just as bad, constantly complaining about everything and checking out every man or centaur who came near her. What a hypocrite! Shannon was an alcoholic who cussed constantly (I don't mind cussing and drinking but not ALL the time!) and who worried far more about what she was going to eat or wear or what jewellery she would put on than about the pain or annihilation of the people of her new world. After a battle, she was more worried about whether her breath or clothes smelled than whether her friends had survived. She was shallow, self-centred and annoying, and yet all the other characters were written as adoring her and constantly telling her so. She also went around saying "Oh God" all the time, and didn't ever stop to worry that this might be inappropriate given that she lived in the temple of a Goddess. She apparently didn't care whose religion she offended. Also, she was supposed to be an English teacher, yet she constantly massacred the English language. How can a character who sounds like they never passed a primary school English class possibly be plausible as an English teacher? But worst of all, she was obsessed with John Wayne, and talked about him constantly. I simply cannot empathise with anyone who has such abysmal taste in men! Ugh!

I also hated a lot of other things. Like the modern lingo used in this supposedly ancient setting. And I couldn't understand why, when Shannon was transported to a strange mirror universe and told to pretend to be someone else, she didn't protest or try to get information about her new world or ask what would happen to her or try to get out of her sudden marriage to a centaur. That just didn't make sense. Her only concern seemed to be that they keep giving her wine (like I said, she's an alcoholic.) Shannon didn't bat an eyelid when it was mentioned that she would have to perform sacrifices, and no mention was ever made of this again. Personally, in her place, I would have said something! Another thing I disliked, and maybe I'm just being super PC here, was that the evil enemy armies that invaded Shannon's kingdom were described as coming from 'the far east'. This just seemed to me like the author was having a bit of a racist dig at the far eastern peoples of our own world. Also, the author seemed to have a hangup about beauty. Naturally, all of the bad guys were really ugly, and all of the good guys were super gorgeous...it was SO Disney! And the value of any character's life in the book seemed to be based on their personal attractiveness. In fact, at one point Shannon said to herself about another character 'I didn't want to think about what would happen to her if the creatures caught her. Except for the unnaturally bright flush of her skin, she was still breathtakingly beautiful.' Shannon seemed sadder when someone particularly attractive got hurt, as if beautiful people were worth more. Also, this book had a lot of repitition. Shannon's jokes were always reiterated over and over, ad nauseum. And I lost count of the number of times ClanFintan 'brushed an errant curl back from her face', but it must have been mentioned over a dozen times. What an overused romance book cliche!

I must admit, I was actually a little confused about what the author was trying to achieve when she wrote this book. It appeared that she was trying to write a light-hearted, breezy, funny, flirty romance book. But if that was the case then why did she throw in so many dark, depressing, serious topics, including an evil army of vampires, war, torture, mass murder, mutilation, kidnap, rape, slavery, ritual sacrifice, inter-special breeding, genocide, and plague? Those aren't subjects that you can treat in a light, breezy, funny way, and that is the main reason why this book didn't work for me. Note to author: a light-hearted, funny book doesn't usually include the brutal slaying and mutilation of three quarters or more of its entire cast!

But not all the blame for the book's failings can fall upon its innapropriate heroine or plot twists. There was also a failure by the publisher to correct legions of spelling errors and grammatical mistakes. For instance, using the word broach instead of brooch, or these quotes: 'sneak a peak at him', 'I've never really have an inhibition problem' or 'It was just too dang hard to ignore a goddess when she was inside your brain and tapped your guilt button'. There were hundreds more mistakes like these, but I won't bore you with them. Apparently since this book was first published the author has done a rewrite of it under a different title (read her blog for details if you give a damn) in which she is supposed to have tidied up these sorts of errors. But I'm willing to bet that she still hasn't fixed the things I had the biggest problems with, such as the huge credibility gaps and Shannon's sarcastic shallowness.

I wouldn't say this is a bad book, and I definitely wouldn't say it's the worst one I've read. It had its merits and was quite amusing at times. But I wouldn't exactly recommend it, and I WON'T be reading any more books by the same author.

I really enjoyed the first half of GODDESS BY MISTAKE by P.C. Cast, thinking it an intriguing idea and refreshingly original; unfortunately, this fantasy-romance novel lost its tension (and, sadly, my interest) in the second half of the book, making it something of an effort to finish.

First, the good: GODDESS BY MISTAKE is the first-person narration of Oklahoma school teacher Shannon Parker, who is sent into an alternate world in which everyone believes she is Rhiannon, goddess incarnate and follower of Epona, a Celtic goddess of war and horses. To complicate matters further, Shannon/Rhiannon is immediately married to ClanFintan, a centaur shaman with the ability to shape-shift. I LOVED this idea. It was fascinating to see Shannon/Rhiannon adjust to her role as goddess incarnate and deal with the fact that she's expected to mate with a man who is half horse. The author writes with a funny sense of humor, and I was giggling wildly at the thought of wondering how Shannon/Rhiannon was going to deal with it all.

Now, the bad: What interested me upfront about the relationship between Shannon/Rhiannon and the centaur was the fact that there was heavy tension between them. A good romance novel feeds off of that tension until the very end. Which makes me wonder if GODDESS was supposed to be a romance novel because, unfortunately, the two lovers fell in love immediately, killing all the tension by the middle of the book (their major love scene was also pretty tame). From that point on, the centaur is left with nothing else to do in the story but give his wife massages and fight the bad guys (everybody else is fighting the bad guys, too, so this is nothing special).

Speaking of the bad guys, the book is mostly about the good guys battling the bad guys (demon-vampire creatures), making it feel like it is more fantasy than romance. I wasn't interested in that. Sigh.

Anyway, this is the second P.C. Cast book I've read, the other being GODDESS OF THE SEA. I noticed that in both books, the hero is pretty much a secondary character, and his undying love is given upfront and guaranteed. All the so-called tension is supposed to come from "bad" characters. If you don't mind this, then I am sure you will enjoy GODDESS BY MISTAKE, for it is an interesting and creative fantasy. But if you are like me and are looking for a delicious, page-turning ROMANCE with steamy love scenes, then I don't think this book is for you.

I don't think I can ever say enough about this book-it was so fantastic!

Just starting her summer vacation as a schoolteacher, Shannon Parker goes to an antique show and buys a vase that transports her to another place and time. Shannon quickly finds out that she has traded places with the High Priestess Epona who could be her twin in body but not personality. While the people around her adore Epona, they also fear her for her vicious temper. Only half recovered from what ever happened to her to transport her to this new place, Shannon finds herself suddenly getting married to a horse (actually a centaur) and it is all she can do to pretend to fill the missing Priestess' shoes! It isn't until her usually pleasant dreams become nightmares that she finds out they are actually visions, that Shannon finds maybe she really has the strength of a goddess. With each new vision Shannon and her husband the centaur, ClanFintan find themselves closer and closer to a battle with a formidable enemy. With the love of her husband, and his people standing with hers they unite the land in a war that will either be their salvation or total annihilation!

Ms Cast has written a very powerful novel. We have reincarnation, centaurs, Muses, magic and a really creepy enemy called the Fomorians. Where much of the book could be dark, our heroine refuses to let it. She has such an upbeat personality that makes it hard not to laugh as Shannon constantly has conversations with herself. She sets out to befriend Epona's "slaves" and later the female centaurs (loved them!) because every woman needs good friends; which is something the real Epona would never have done. And the people love her for it! GODDESS BY MISTAKE is written in first person and for most of the book, I didn't even notice. As for our hero, wow! ClanFintan is a centaur that has the ability to transform into a human man. Prior to their marriage, the real Epona had returned all his gifts and he had found her unwilling to go through with the promised marriage. However, to the woman he married he was still a gentleman (gentlecentaur?), and showed every courtesy, so much patience and understanding - this to Shannon who was a completely different woman than he totally expected; remember he thought he was marrying Epona. While Shannon needed his understanding in order to adjust to her new situation, Shannon falls in love with him. The scenes between them are so touching. Rather than the impression of a couple newlywed, it seems that Shannon and ClanFintan have an known each other for a long span of time rather than a couple that just met. The war for their survival was so well written; I had scenes that were reminiscent of battles from LOTRs running through my head. While the battle is a poignant moment in the story, the book itself is so much more; it's ...you will just need to read the book. GODDESS BY MISTAKE was a wonderful story that should appeal to readers of romance, fantasy or mythology. I can't recommend it enough!

Shannon Parker, a high school English teacher, experiences what can mildly be called a 'jolt' when she is thrown into a different world. Her mirror image in this new world, Rhiannon, the High Priestess of the goddess Epona, had observed Shannon in her world and sought to take her place. Both got more than they bargained for.

While in this new world, Shannon finds out that Lady Rhiannon was spoiled, self indulgent, rude and willful: not a well liked woman at all. And she finds herself wedding a centaur, who obviously dislikes Rhiannon. But by being herself, Shannon wins over all those around her.

Sometime between falling in love, blessing the masses, and nursing victims sick with the plague, Shannon sees in her dreams a horrifying band of creatures murdering whole castles full of people, and mating with the women. Soon, Shannon's task becomes clear: she must stop these living, breathing atrocities.

Though the book has a minimum of actual mythology, the characters and storyline should keep any fantasy fan hooked. The way Cast wrote the centaurs was intriguing, and the characters are true to life and wonderful. While the ending sort of tapers off, as if the author became tired of plotting out every little thing, overall, the book was wonderful and monstrously entertaining.

After reading this book, Elphame's choice made a lot more sense. The book itself wasn't bad, but not quite what I'd expect. It's more of a fantasy novel than a romance novel, and Elphame's Choice, which is touted by my local bookstore as a fantasy novel, is more romantic.

One thing I disliked about this book is the way it's told. First person is great, but in this one I didn't think it worked. I also didn't like all the modern references, especially to pop culture. Sure, Shannon's retelling of the Highwayman is great, but I didn't really need to be reminded of the haunting voice of Loreena Mckennitt while I heard her tell stories. I also had problems with the idea that Shannon was always bathing, getting dressed, or drinking wine.

I also think that ClanFintan accepted her way too quickly. Suddenly she admits she's not Rhiannon, and bang, he accepts her and takes her to bed. I just don't buy it, sorry. I also wonder how this ties into Elphame's Choice, you'd honestly think that Lochlan's mother would be mentioned, as kin to Rhiannon, and that it might have been passed down through family lore that Rhiannon was a woman from another dimension.

For a first novel, it's not bad. I think Cast could have done a lot more with the Vase transporting through time, or done away wit hall together after Shannon came through. After all, if this is a one way trip, why'd the vase come back? I'm glad I read this after I read most of her other books, because I was disappointed, and probably wouldn't have picked up her other books if this is what I'd read first.

P.C. Cast's novel, GODDESS BY MISTAKE, is an absolute delight. Its characters are rich and enchanting, and its plot is compelling. I simply couldn't put the book down, and I'm not normally a fantasy reader. So P.C.'s book reaches beyond genre, and is simply a splendid novel. It gives us grief, passion, laughter, all on a grand scale. That's why I'm convinced P.C. has done the next-to-impossible; she's given us a contemporary mythology that empowers women and the men who love them.