Kate O'Hearn

Thirteen-year-old Emily's life is transformed when Pegasus, the mythological winged horse, crashes onto the roof of her building during a New York City blackout and takes her to Olympus where she faces monsters, a corrupt governmental agency, and the quest to keep the Olympic flame burning.

The Flame of Olympus

Hannah Yang

The Flame of Olympus started splat, right in the action (well, the Prologue did. If the whole book started in the action it would be pretty confusing.) It's a fun, sweet book and I love how Joel changes and how defensive he is towards Pegasus and Emily. I personally love how Emily is such a strong, determined character.

One of my favorite characters was Paelen. He is sneaky and deceitful, true, but in the end he had a chance at freedom and dismissed it. Then, when the Nirads attacked the CRU, he stayed behind the sacrifice himself. There's something about this kind of character growth that made me smile.

Overall, I would definitely definitely recommend this book, especially if you're a fan of the Percy Jackson series!

Kirsten Simkiss

I went into this hoping I would like it and I really just couldn't. There were too many small things that really killed it for me. I was so hopeful because I love stories that center around mythology, but this book just couldn't seem to hold it's own. I honestly feel like it deserves 2.5 stars, but it wasn't good enough to warrant 3 stars for Goodreads purposes in my book. I honestly don't understand why this has such a high rating.

The characters were, pardoning the expression given the subject matter, mercurial. The only characters with any sort of consistency were Emily and Diana. Everyone else seemed to be whatever the author wanted them to be in that moment. If you've ever watched a movie, particularly a horror movie, and a character makes an obviously dumb move that has you shouting at the screen, that was how I felt in multiple scenes.

Speaking of the scenes, the whole thing felt like I was reading a novelized script for a CW teen show's pilot episode. The dialogue was simple, the action was simple and fairly predictable, and there were so many inconsistencies with the myths of Olympus that it made my head spin. For example, certain gods actually die in the book. Gods. You know, immortal beings. It doesn't explain how they could ever have killed a god. Diminished powers, sure, fine, whatever. But dying? It just didn't make sense.

Not to mention, one of those things that just irked me was that Emily insisted on calling Pegasus "Pegs" for 75% of the book. It just sounds plain stupid. If I were Pegasus, I'd be kicking Emily straight in the teeth.

Now, all that being said and my not liking it aside, there were a few aspects of the story that I thought were great. Namely, how they interpreted the myths in ways that weren't directly contrary to them. For instance, I thought it was very inventive to have the Olympians only eating sugar as a food source because it was the closest to ambrosia and nectar that they could get. Unfortunately, those few bits and pieces just couldn't save the book for me.

I'm not really sure what age group to recommend this to. It's simple enough that an older elementary schooler would be comfortable reading it, but it has more YA subject matter that would be more appropriate for teen readers. However, for teens, it would definitely be too simple a read. That being said, I won't be touting this book to any of my friends.

The Flame of Olympus

Reviews