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A review by virgilsaeneid
Blood of Hercules by Jasmine Mas
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
1.0
I'm just a girl. And it turns out, I'm Hercules.....
You know what girl, I saw that TV glow a little too. AKA, my (mostly) spoiler free 1 star review of Blood of Hercules
Blood of Hercules is romantasy's newest baby. I saw the usual culprits salivating over this book across social media. I was happy living in blissful ignorance, though. Romantasy is only my cup of tea once in a blue moon and from the content I was seeing produced about it, it was your run-of-the-mill tropeified romantasy written by a millennial. Which it was. Until a screenshot of the blurb was posted by WolfyTheWitch on Twitter and I learned what this book was actually about. After this blurb blew up on Twitter, I started seeing excerpts from the book, and needless to say, there were a lot of laughs about the quality. Then my friend, Stef, and I decided to break our reading slumps by hate-reading it.
I'm not here to yuck anyone's yum. If you like this book, hell yeah, I love that for you. But I decided to put the thousands of dollars I'm in debt to the Australian government for an ancient history degree to good use and criticize this book. Unsurprisingly, Blood of Hercules is not a 1:1 retelling of the myth of Hercules. I can't even consider it a retelling of any myth because it just uses Graeco-Roman mythology as buzzwords. The plot follows 19-year-old orphaned Alexis in a dystopian Montana as she struggles against poverty and the rise of Titans. Titans in this book, for clarification, are more similar to the ones from Attack on Titan than the Greek ones. They're mindless beasts who kill humans because.... yeah! I'm not really sure why, they're just an apex predator kept at bay by the immortal Spartans. Which aren't actually from Sparta, they're demigods, but for some reason, Mas decided to call them Spartans. It all feels a little bit like she was inspired by the liberal take of Greek myth God of War took, but that's a whole 'nother conversation. Alexis is spirited away to Italy after finding out she has Spartan blood after she sits an exam at school. She then faces a massacre for... some reason? Then sits through months of rigorous education in Thagorean, Classical Lore, and Discipline called the Crucible for... some reason? Also despite supposedly being a book about ancient Greek myth, a lot of things are Romanized and Latin is spoken abundantly, once again, for.... some reason? These trials and tribulations are meant to turn the students into fully qualified Spartans. There's also something about a stalker that's supposed to be the main threat to the plot, but honestly, the main threat was the incredibly toxic masculinity rife in this book. The main problem actually is more of a subplot and is only really considered in the last 100 pages. Obviously, though, this is a romantasy. Let me introduce you to the main romance candidates:
- Patro, who is meant to be Patroclus. He's weirdly aggressive and one of Alexis' mentors. He also becomes pretty irrelevant after the first 15-20% of the book. For someone who is consistently named gentle and kind-hearted in the canon text, this Patroclus is unnervingly rude, unkind, misogynistic and aggressive. Which is honestly all of the romance candidates.
- Achilles, who is muzzled like Bane because he puts people into comas with his voice. He and Patro are together in this book so like, three cheers for beating the "just friends" stereotype. Although they want to bring Alexis in as their third. Girl run. He's also generally a nutbag and aggressive.
- Kharon, who's the son of Artemis and Erebus.... Artemis.... the Virgin Goddess, Artemis. Unimportant, I guess! He's the weirdest of the bunch, in my opinion, openly psychopathic and reeks of toxic masculinity. Possessive and not in an attractive way. Yells a lot.
- Augustus, one of her professors during the Crucible. He's with Kharon and also just a really weird guy. He speaks Latin a lot, which I guess is fitting as the one guy with a Latin name. He glares menacingly at her in classes and threatens her between them. Such a great guy. He also has the 2020 split-dye hair which I find kind of funny.
There are also irrelevant love interests like a siren, Maximus Hera, the other professor who's called Pine, and "dozens of men" who are ready to marry her in a heartbeat at the end of the book. Most of the plot focuses on Alexis interacting with these strange and unsettling men in a way that's meant to be sexy, but when coupled with their toxic personalities and Mas' quite frankly poor writing style, comes across as awkward and cringeworthy.
With this plot in mind, let me discuss my true issue with this book. A spelling error in your dedication does not bode well for any book's quality. Blood of Hercules has a writing style reminiscent of 2010s fanfiction with an immature FMC and problematic LIs. Several My Immortal jokes were made in the reading process. I wouldn't be entirely shocked if it was inspired by it - or if Mas was the original writer, as her author bio describes her as a "Harry Potter fanfiction addict." Mas' writing style lacks confidence, practices odd habits, and overuses parentheses in an attempt to be funny. The way things are phrased doesn't always make sense, or come across as jarring. Instead of trying to explain this, I've decided to create a list of lines that stood out to me. Buckle in, lovelies.
"In contrast, the Cthonic Houses were the Spartans with bloodred eyes. Cthonics had powers that only hurt others, such as torture, mind control, pain."
This excerpt is from chapter two, a chapter that is entirely dedicated to exposition and lore dumping. It reads like a new university student's essay.
"The Olympian led federation saw an opportunity to reintroduce themselves to humanity.
The gods rose again.
They also seized a chance to punish Cthonics."
Mas frequently uses this structure. Long sentence. Paragraph. Short "attention-grabbing" sentence. Paragraph. Explanation.
"The only women Cthonics are heirs," he said vehemently. "A half-human female Cthonic is literally impossible - our power would rip you to shreds from the inside out. It would tear you into pathetic pieces and boil your womb. You can't even fathom what we feel."
The FMC doesn't even try to contest this.Neither does Mas when Alexis is revealed to be a Cthonic heir to Hades and Persephone instead of half-human . The random misogyny is just there and never addressed. It's only exacerbated later with this doozy: "Suddenly the old beliefs that women had 'hysteria' problems didn't seem so far-fetched. I could see it. Case in point, I was a woman, and I was hysterical." I don't think I need to explain why that paragraph is genuinely a bit of an insane take. Not only is the misogyny perpetrated by male characters, but it's also pushed by the FMC???
"I knew you had it in you, bestie. Pussy power, crush the patriarchy! Don't stop now - murder them all. KILL EVERYONE IN THIS ROOM!"
This book is set in 2090. Yet apparently Millennial and Gen Z slang is still in use for.... reasons? Which is honestly how half the book is excused.
Needless to say, there are a lot of things that made me go what the fuck while reading it. I have some real top moments and I could sit here for hours and hours going on about them. The random biphobic takes, racial insensitivity, whatever the hell "male satisfaction" is. I won't, though because this review will double in length. Alexis' demeanour is awkward, quirky and borderline idiotic. Every other character falls into either the category of mean or boring (except for Lena the siren, I miss her.) There's a lot to be said about how I found this book bad, but I want to leave it on somewhat of a positive note because obviously, I have to respect anyone who puts their book out into the world.
I did have fun with this book. It was indulgent, sure, but it was genuinely kind of a silly book that I finished in three days. I posted a reading thread about it on Twitter that gained a decent amount of traction and has made a lot of people consider picking up the book if only to read something that's not so heavy. I'm not the right audience for this book, especially considering how positively received this book has been by many communities - I mean, hell, it got nominated as the 2024 Romantasy of the Year on Goodreads. What I am though is a conscious reader. I'm sure I'm to some extent biased because I went into reading this understanding it would be a hate read for me. But ultimately, the writing style, poor characterization, random use of Graeco-Roman myth (Mas allegedly has a degree in Classics from Georgetown???) and lukewarm world building was a hurdle I couldn't quite get over.
Who knows though, maybe I'll pick up book two once it drops just to have a laugh again. Cheers for breaking me out of my reading slump, Mas. I give you one out of five stars for this one, but know that it's a very shiny star.
You know what girl, I saw that TV glow a little too. AKA, my (mostly) spoiler free 1 star review of Blood of Hercules
Blood of Hercules is romantasy's newest baby. I saw the usual culprits salivating over this book across social media. I was happy living in blissful ignorance, though. Romantasy is only my cup of tea once in a blue moon and from the content I was seeing produced about it, it was your run-of-the-mill tropeified romantasy written by a millennial. Which it was. Until a screenshot of the blurb was posted by WolfyTheWitch on Twitter and I learned what this book was actually about. After this blurb blew up on Twitter, I started seeing excerpts from the book, and needless to say, there were a lot of laughs about the quality. Then my friend, Stef, and I decided to break our reading slumps by hate-reading it.
I'm not here to yuck anyone's yum. If you like this book, hell yeah, I love that for you. But I decided to put the thousands of dollars I'm in debt to the Australian government for an ancient history degree to good use and criticize this book. Unsurprisingly, Blood of Hercules is not a 1:1 retelling of the myth of Hercules. I can't even consider it a retelling of any myth because it just uses Graeco-Roman mythology as buzzwords. The plot follows 19-year-old orphaned Alexis in a dystopian Montana as she struggles against poverty and the rise of Titans. Titans in this book, for clarification, are more similar to the ones from Attack on Titan than the Greek ones. They're mindless beasts who kill humans because.... yeah! I'm not really sure why, they're just an apex predator kept at bay by the immortal Spartans. Which aren't actually from Sparta, they're demigods, but for some reason, Mas decided to call them Spartans. It all feels a little bit like she was inspired by the liberal take of Greek myth God of War took, but that's a whole 'nother conversation. Alexis is spirited away to Italy after finding out she has Spartan blood after she sits an exam at school. She then faces a massacre for... some reason? Then sits through months of rigorous education in Thagorean, Classical Lore, and Discipline called the Crucible for... some reason? Also despite supposedly being a book about ancient Greek myth, a lot of things are Romanized and Latin is spoken abundantly, once again, for.... some reason? These trials and tribulations are meant to turn the students into fully qualified Spartans. There's also something about a stalker that's supposed to be the main threat to the plot, but honestly, the main threat was the incredibly toxic masculinity rife in this book. The main problem actually is more of a subplot and is only really considered in the last 100 pages. Obviously, though, this is a romantasy. Let me introduce you to the main romance candidates:
- Patro, who is meant to be Patroclus. He's weirdly aggressive and one of Alexis' mentors. He also becomes pretty irrelevant after the first 15-20% of the book. For someone who is consistently named gentle and kind-hearted in the canon text, this Patroclus is unnervingly rude, unkind, misogynistic and aggressive. Which is honestly all of the romance candidates.
- Achilles, who is muzzled like Bane because he puts people into comas with his voice. He and Patro are together in this book so like, three cheers for beating the "just friends" stereotype. Although they want to bring Alexis in as their third. Girl run. He's also generally a nutbag and aggressive.
- Kharon, who's the son of Artemis and Erebus.... Artemis.... the Virgin Goddess, Artemis. Unimportant, I guess! He's the weirdest of the bunch, in my opinion, openly psychopathic and reeks of toxic masculinity. Possessive and not in an attractive way. Yells a lot.
- Augustus, one of her professors during the Crucible. He's with Kharon and also just a really weird guy. He speaks Latin a lot, which I guess is fitting as the one guy with a Latin name. He glares menacingly at her in classes and threatens her between them. Such a great guy. He also has the 2020 split-dye hair which I find kind of funny.
There are also irrelevant love interests like a siren, Maximus Hera, the other professor who's called Pine, and "dozens of men" who are ready to marry her in a heartbeat at the end of the book. Most of the plot focuses on Alexis interacting with these strange and unsettling men in a way that's meant to be sexy, but when coupled with their toxic personalities and Mas' quite frankly poor writing style, comes across as awkward and cringeworthy.
With this plot in mind, let me discuss my true issue with this book. A spelling error in your dedication does not bode well for any book's quality. Blood of Hercules has a writing style reminiscent of 2010s fanfiction with an immature FMC and problematic LIs. Several My Immortal jokes were made in the reading process. I wouldn't be entirely shocked if it was inspired by it - or if Mas was the original writer, as her author bio describes her as a "Harry Potter fanfiction addict." Mas' writing style lacks confidence, practices odd habits, and overuses parentheses in an attempt to be funny. The way things are phrased doesn't always make sense, or come across as jarring. Instead of trying to explain this, I've decided to create a list of lines that stood out to me. Buckle in, lovelies.
"In contrast, the Cthonic Houses were the Spartans with bloodred eyes. Cthonics had powers that only hurt others, such as torture, mind control, pain."
This excerpt is from chapter two, a chapter that is entirely dedicated to exposition and lore dumping. It reads like a new university student's essay.
"The Olympian led federation saw an opportunity to reintroduce themselves to humanity.
The gods rose again.
They also seized a chance to punish Cthonics."
Mas frequently uses this structure. Long sentence. Paragraph. Short "attention-grabbing" sentence. Paragraph. Explanation.
"The only women Cthonics are heirs," he said vehemently. "A half-human female Cthonic is literally impossible - our power would rip you to shreds from the inside out. It would tear you into pathetic pieces and boil your womb. You can't even fathom what we feel."
The FMC doesn't even try to contest this.
"I knew you had it in you, bestie. Pussy power, crush the patriarchy! Don't stop now - murder them all. KILL EVERYONE IN THIS ROOM!"
This book is set in 2090. Yet apparently Millennial and Gen Z slang is still in use for.... reasons? Which is honestly how half the book is excused.
Needless to say, there are a lot of things that made me go what the fuck while reading it. I have some real top moments and I could sit here for hours and hours going on about them. The random biphobic takes, racial insensitivity, whatever the hell "male satisfaction" is. I won't, though because this review will double in length. Alexis' demeanour is awkward, quirky and borderline idiotic. Every other character falls into either the category of mean or boring (except for Lena the siren, I miss her.) There's a lot to be said about how I found this book bad, but I want to leave it on somewhat of a positive note because obviously, I have to respect anyone who puts their book out into the world.
I did have fun with this book. It was indulgent, sure, but it was genuinely kind of a silly book that I finished in three days. I posted a reading thread about it on Twitter that gained a decent amount of traction and has made a lot of people consider picking up the book if only to read something that's not so heavy. I'm not the right audience for this book, especially considering how positively received this book has been by many communities - I mean, hell, it got nominated as the 2024 Romantasy of the Year on Goodreads. What I am though is a conscious reader. I'm sure I'm to some extent biased because I went into reading this understanding it would be a hate read for me. But ultimately, the writing style, poor characterization, random use of Graeco-Roman myth (Mas allegedly has a degree in Classics from Georgetown???) and lukewarm world building was a hurdle I couldn't quite get over.
Who knows though, maybe I'll pick up book two once it drops just to have a laugh again. Cheers for breaking me out of my reading slump, Mas. I give you one out of five stars for this one, but know that it's a very shiny star.