Well, this is difficult.

For several reasons, this isn’t quite 4 stars. I want to add like another .4  of a star—for creativity, complexity, and not so much for the actual text of the novel, but for the artwork on the cover and the inclusion of beautiful and unique indexes, and a story-focused map that transforms New York into a battlefield for the Greek gods, the descendent warrior families, and their followers.

My critical bone over the writing kicks in, because after all, we’re rating writing here.  The actual execution of the story only deserves a middle-road 3, maybe less. It’s clunky, wordy, and drags out explanations in places, but seems to miss important details in others; it uses misplaced expletives that come off sounding juvenile and awkward rather than natural; bases relationships on unsteady foundations as these appear or are destroyed by a word, relationships balanced on a precarious trust—and trust simply turns to mist on a passing wind or miraculously out of nothing finds solid ground on which to flourish.

The pace is fast, so fast at times you have to stop and go back and wonder what in the world you missed along the way, and yet there isn’t anything to add.

The characters are developed quickly based on flashbacks that reveal their historical connections. Don’t miss the introductory glossary of family lines at the beginning of the book, and the index of characters and families at the end of the book; these are vital for catching nuances included in the story that no one will take time to explain, though there is enough explanatory dialogue between battle scenes to fill quite a few pages.

The fight scenes are numerous, plenty, lots of blood and if a cat has nine lives, Lore has 20, because she’s bloodied and broken from page one, and her trauma is more than physical.

Overall, the myths of Greek gods come alive in the pages, in the streets of New York in this 7-day competitive battle, cycled every 7 years as ordered and upheld by the gods. The concept is wild and exciting, and would make for an adventurous video game. The story races towards the finish, with battle scenes arising in iconic New York parks and museums, allegiances twisting and flip-flopping between participants until no one knows who to trust, but many of the combat-trained participants share the same end goal, which is to end the cycle of epic battling, and they work to destroy the cycle by engaging in violent blood baths and fire storms until the last day.

If you like that sort of thing…