Customer Reviews

Hades' Daughter (The Troy game)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(12)

 

 

I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand, I liked it enough to finish it and to probably read the next volume in the trilogy. On the other hand, there were times that I couldn't wait to be done with it and move on to something better.

I'll not summarize the plot here, except to say that "Hades' Daughter" is a historical fantasy built around the relationship of three antagonistic major characters and one villain. The three antagonists also form a romantic triangle, of sorts. The heroine has a love/hate relationship with the hero, who is in love with the third. There are enough hints given by Douglass that the hero and heroine really should be together, but one or the other always manages to say or do the wrong thing and make the other mad. At times, reading the book was like watching a soap opera where you want to figuratively bash the lead characters over the head because they're making so many dumb mistakes.

Frankly, I didn't find any of the three major characters particularly likeable. Brutus, the hero, is best described by his name--brutal. He conquers the heroine's father's kingdom, forces her into marriage and rapes her, and then obsesses about another woman. Why Cornelia, the heroine, would ever care about him is beyond me, but she does. Genvissa, her rival, is manipulative and power-hungary. There were other minor characters that were more likable, but for me, the unpleasantness of the main characters destroyed much of the book's pleasure.

That's a shame, because in many ways I like the way Douglass writes. She has the ability write long, involving stories with interesting motifs. The idea of magical mazes underlying cities is an intriguing one, for example, and Douglass can move a narrative along with good descriptions. I also liked the idea of the same characters interacting again and again in different lives. In the end, I'll probably read the next volume, but I'll wait for the paperback.

Luckily, I listened to this book while I exercised rather than read it and found that Douglass's straightforward uncomplicated literary style directly complimented the mindless activity I strove to accomplish. This is not to say that I thought the book uninteresting or boring in any way. On the contrary, the storyline moves along, albeit the pre-historical plotline jars pathetically with the author's modern jargon leaving the reader no choice but to roll one's eyes upward in utter amazement at the blatant inconsistency.

In a nutshell, the plot revolves around a somewhat undefined 'game' at which a labyrinth plays an integral part in protecting the city in which it is located. With the anger of a spurned woman, Ariadne of Crete beseiges her half-man half-bull brother Asterion to teach her the dark ways that will help her destroy the power of the labyrinth after Theseus throws her over for her younger sister. Of course, as mistress of the labyrinth, she leaves a backdoor for herself and her female progeny--a way in which to recreate the game in a future time and reclaim her power. Approximately 100 years later, Ariadne's heir Genvesa is all but ready, however she needs a King man to help her dance the mystical powers of the game back into being and forever trap Asterion in the center of the maze. Trojan Brutus, adept at the game, is her man and through a series of ploys and adventures, Genvesa lures him from Greece to the misty land of Albion--the southern portion of the British Isles. One crucial problem arises to snag Genvesa's plans when Brutus impulsively takes Cornelia, the daughter of a conquered king, as his wife and drags her along on his quest for the promised land of New Troy. In Albion, Genvesa has all but destroyed the old god and goddess that ruled the island. When the Albion mother goddess, Mag, Genvesa's chief foe, hides within Cornelia, Genvesa's plans to reconstruct the game are almost permanently foiled.

As you can imagine, this tale is long and fraught with the machinations of all characters who seek either self-preservation or the heady power of pure domination. Douglass cleverly combines many myths to support her premise and to bring alive the baser natures of her creations. However trite, there is sex, gore and raw emotion galore, so much so that I found myself wincing with disgust at many of the too descriptive passages enlightening the reader to scenes of birth, death and utter savagery. The characters seem to be intentionally crafted as archetypes like the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece rather than real fleshed out personas. Brutus lives only for the power of kingship and possession of Genvesa. Cornelia, raped and torn from her family and country, somehow improbably forgets her grief and yearns for love from her brutal husband. Genvesa connives with a hallowe'en witch's malevolence while the rest of the cast are simply not finely drawn enough to not be categorized as either good or evil. All characters are either blighted with trite dialogue or overly long-winded emotional explosions.

Bottom line: While the story will keep your attention, none of the characters are subtle enough to capture your emotions; they are stylized shadows which at times fail to elicit much response other than a shrug and a turn of the page. The literary style fails to recreate a feel for ancient times, rather it attributes modern day sensibilities to otherwise primordial savages. I don't know if I will read the second volume of this trilogy unless I could again listen to it while I engaged in something physically challenging.

The Troy Game as a series is phenomenal - the next two books are just amazing and well worth getting through this one for.

Not that this book is "bad". I'd say that the second quarter is where it drags...right about where it focuses on the Trojan fleet, the early descriptions of the place they landed on, and a huge focus on Brutus, one of the most unlikeable characters I've ever read about. The book quickly escalates, though, introducing well-written characters...characters who are not exactly likeable. Sure, there's a few that you'll root for, but the central three characters - Brutus, Genvissa, and Cornelia - are just not Good people. Brutus and Genvissa for obvious reasons - He's violent, selfish, and abusive to everyone around him, and She's trying to destroy her very land for her own ambitions. Cornelia, however, isn't doing anything wrong...she just lacks a backbone like nobody else I have ever heard about/read about/seen, and the way she keeps flinging herself at Brutus's feet, even after the terrible things he does to her...it just gets me angry when I read about it.

The book ends on a high note, though - a wonderfully bloody ending that's both incredibly satisfying, depressing, and disturbing...giving us a glimpse of what's in store in the next two volumes.

This book (and the series as a whole) is full of violence, terrible deeds, and unlikeable characters...that slowly begin to redeem themselves as time goes on. There's no other series I have ever read that's quite like the Troy Game...spanning thousands of years of our real-world history, full of characters that are extemely well-written and events that continue to surprise you. It's far, far more dark and depressing than any other fantasy series I have read, and it's not for everybody. But if you like to feel anger when you read, if you can stomach having terrible things happen to characters you love, and if you can live with endings that are anything but happy...then this series is for you.

Greek mythology is full of mythical creatures, gods tormenting great heroes, epic battles, and is generally quite exciting and a lot of fun. The characters, be they mortal or gods, are well known through the telling and re-telling of myths and legends through the millennia since the events were supposed to have happened. Somehow, Sara Douglass manages to strip the personality from the characters and excitement from the oft told tales, leaving the protagonists as cardboard cut outs meandering through a number of seemingly unrelated and uninspiring events.

The central character Cornelia is a spoiled brat, and several misfortunes befall her. However, it's hard to feel any sympathy for her because her own arrogance brings much of it on her own head. Her tormentor, and husband Brutus (now there's an original name), is the brooding, silent type, but is also a leader of people trying to rediscover their lost kingdom of Troy.

Other characters come from ancient British mythology, and they are involved in incestuous relationships and fiddling with magic, but ultimately further confuse the messy story. As if this were not enough, Douglass also intersperses the story with flash-forwards to London during the Second World War, which shows the characters are still alive 3000 years after the original events.

Through it all there are episodes of graphic and gory violence, and unnecessarily brutal sex scenes. It is impossible to connect with any of the characters because they are so fatally flawed, and I actually found myself hoping something horrible would happen to some of them. Unfortunately, it was telegraphed so early in the piece who survives it made such wishes utterly futile.

This is a thoroughly disheartening read. It promises so much and delivers so little, taking the lively world of the ancient Greeks and wringing all excitement and vitality from it.

This book is the reason I will never buy Sara Douglass in hardcover ever again. With her Wayfarer Redemption series I actually enjoyed it enough to order the rest of the 5 online from England in order to not wait on US publication. However, this book had no characters I could empathize with though I did finish it. I might buy the sequel in paperback if there's nothing else good out.

I so enjoyed the Axis books that I expected more of this one. The main characters were all rather shallow & predictable, not what I expected from the previous novels by Douglass. It seemed as though the slow start turned into a hurry to tie everything up in the last chapter. I don't plan on purchasing the sequel.

Ummm... Where to begin? I listened to the Audio version of Hades' daughter and admit I found it very disappointing, so much so, that I couldn't finish it. Here's the story: Brutus, an heir to the Trojan empire becomes the unwitting pawn of a power play between an evil sorceress and her deformed incestuous brother. Chaos, mayhem and carnage ensue. If you're like me, this sounds like a typical fantasy/sci-fi plot, and you might enjoy it. Well, I didn't... Here's why:

Douglass' writing style is not for everyone. She skips around quite a bit and tells the story from so many different characters perspective at times it becomes tedious, and some plot threads seem to go nowhere. Many of the characters the reader is supposed to sympathize with are so vile it was difficult to for me to care about. An example: Brutus, the main male character brutally rapes the lead female character in one scene and is unrepentantly emotionally and sexually abusive to her throughout the story. (And this is the good guy!) Feh.

The lead female character, Cornelia spends half the remainder of the novel trying to 'appease' Brutus, when she should be kicking his sorry you-know-what to the curb. The ongoing rivalry between The sister/brother sorcerers, just had me sighing. (I would hope that if I keep getting re-incarnated that it won't be to duke it out with my sister in the next life).

I really had to give up on this book halfway through. I couldn't handle the rape/sex scenes, and the constant degradation of the heroine, who kept trying to 'appease' her sicko hubbie. I really would've liked to have cared about one of these characters but I just couldn't. This novel sets historical fantasy back decades.

I got annoyed with this book the first time I tried to read it, and didn't finish it. Mostly I was irritated with the three main characters, all of whom are less than sympathetic. Cornelia is childish and weepy and naive--though she does have the excuse of being fifteen, and of constantly having to make major life decisions even though the people around her are manipulating and deceiving her. Brutus doesn't have the excuse of being a teenager--he's a brute and a wife-beater and a rapist and a cad, and it never seems to occur to him that perhaps Cornelia would act out less if he either treated her with respect or let her go. Genvissa is a one-dimensional stock femme fatale. Between the three of them, they manage to all treat each other like dirt and make me want to throw things at them.

Yet I found myself, months later, still drawn to the story. So I read it again. This time, I finished the book, enthralled with the story of the Minotaur and his evil designs, and of these three flawed and very human people trying to oppose him and getting tangled up in their personal agendas along the way. What's more, Cornelia develops and grows as a character during the course of the book. Genvissa doesn't change much, and Brutus actually becomes *more* of a jerk, but the series continues into the characters' later incarnations, and perhaps the characters will grow in their future lives.

For now, though, consider me sucked in anyway. It is with anticipation that I've just begun reading the second book, Gods' Concubine.

Hades Daughter is the first book in the Troy Game series, which centers around a somewhat vague ancient magical practice called The Game. According the story's mythos, all ancient cities contained a labyrinth where the city's monarch and a powerful priestess (called the mistress of the labyrinth) trapped all the city's dark energies and magics. As a result the cities were free of disease, famine and vice, but the center of the labyrinth was a hotbed of dark magic.

The story begins where the legend of Adriane and Theseus leaves off. Adriane, mistress of the labyrinth, helps Theseus beat the maze in Minos and destroy her half brother, the Minotaur. Theseus later repays this favor by abandoning the pregnant Adriane because he discovers she won't bear him sons and taking up her sister Phaedra as his lover. Adriane swears revenge and barters with the devil (or Death Crone) to bring her half brother back from the dead. The Minotaur teaches her the dark magics he learned at the center of the maze and helps her destroy The Game and the labyrinths all over the ancient world.

Without The Game to trap evil, the ancient world falls into disrepair. Plagues, droughts and volcanic eruptions kill thousands. Everything Theseus touches is poisoned, including Helen of Troy, his lover, resulting in the Trojan War. The Gods become powerless and fade out of existence.

But Adriane has deceived the Minotaur and left one labyrinth intact. Her great-great-great-great-great granddaughter picks up where Adriane left off and seduces the heir to Troy, Brutus (now a vagabond and mercenary) in an attempt to reactivate The Game and make herself the most powerful woman alive. She knows that whoever controls The Game, can control the world.

The result is novel that leaps from ancient Greece to pagan Britain and back again. The plot twists and turns as each character tries to gain the upper hand in a deceitful battle for a power that none of them really understand, making the novel a suspenseful, ancient soap-opera.

The truly fascinating thing about this book is that it's based, to an extent, on fact. There really was a Trojan Brutus who invaded England in 1100 B.C. Many of the characters mentioned in this novel are real historical figures.

This is the first of a four book saga, so Douglass does leave some loose ends to hopefully be tied up later. Douglass's only big flaw is not giving the reader a hero worth cheering for. All her characters are self-serving (although some for causes they truly believe just) and willing to stab their best friend in the back. They're fun to read about, but you wouldn't want to have lunch with them. Hades' Daughter is definitely fun historical fantasy, but it can't hold it's own against the better plotted, more fleshed out worlds of George R.R. Martin or Jacqueline Carey. Still it's worth the read and the $7.99.

If you've read The Wayfarer Redemption, you're likely going to feel a sense of déjà vu. There's the strong, magical man, and the woman with a destiny calling, and there's the legacy of an ancient empire to restore to grandeur.

Hey, it might have worked a second time, if the characters weren't so odious. While I eventually felt some small sympathy for Cornelia, who at least shows some positive changes in her personality, the other characters might have gotten swallowed up into Tartarus, and nobody would have much cared.

Perhaps in future novels of the series, the male protagonist won't be a jerk, through and through.