Short Story Saturday: The Goddess Queen by Aimee Carter

I don't read a lot of anthologies, but I've recently acquired quite a few, and a few magazines for review, and decided to take a page from Lauren and 365 Days of Reading and do Short Story Saturday, where I talk about a story from an anthology, or even a novella/novellete, every Saturday (or try to)! 


July is devoted to The Goddess Legacy by Aimee Carter, an anthology of five novellas from the cast of The Goddess Test series. It's set to release July 31, 2012 from Harlequin Teen in print and ebook formats. You can preorder it from Amazon | Barnes & Noble 

For millennia we've caught only glimpses of the lives and loves of the gods and goddesses on Olympus. Now Aimee Carter pulls back the curtain on how they became the powerful, petty, loving and dangerous immortals that Kate Winters knows.


Calliope/Hera represented constancy and yet had a husband who never matched her faithfulness....


Ava/Aphrodite was the goddess of love and yet commitment was a totally different deal....


Persephone was urged to marry one man, yet longed for another....


James/Hermes loved to make trouble for others-but never knew true loss before....


Henry/Hades's solitary existence had grown too wearisome to continue. But meeting Kate Winters gave him a new hope....


Five original novellas of love, loss and longing and the will to survive throughout the ages.


***


So the first story in The Goddess Legacy is Calliope's, who is actually Hera. I have to admit that I don't really like Calliope in The Goddess Test or Goddess Interrupted, so when I went to read this one I was more like, okay, well, this story is going to suck.


I'm wrong, btw. I now understand Calliope's motive in The Goddess Test series. And--dare I say it?--I fell for Calliope. I felt her pain, how she was betrayed by Zeus (Walter), and her sisters, and of course, Hades (Henry.) For those who have read my reviews of the books in this series, you know I'm a total Henry fan. And it. . . this novella made me feel a lot of things. ALL THE EMOTIONS!


I really loved Hera's story. I loved how it all tied in to the series and the other novella, The Goddess Hunt. I think I'm going to really enjoy the rest of these stories; it's more backstory, making the characters seem more 3D, you know? 


Also--for those who have studied mythology, you know that they married their brothers/sisters and had their children marry their stepsiblings, etc.--and that happens in this book, and while incest makes me shudder and feel icky, it works. Like I understand why they did this, because there's not a whole lot of them and who ARE they suppose to marry? And it actually didn't make me feel icky, so lots of brownie points for Aimee. :) 


Rating: ★★★★★