I read the first book in the Dark Olympus series and enjoyed it- I love Hades and Persephone retellings, and I also love the sunshine-grump dynamic. I also think Robert is excellent at setting up side characters, which made me anticipate this book with excitement. I was also hoping that Electric Idol would solve some of the issues I had with the first book.
I did love Electric Idol, it has a lot of great themes and strong central characters. One of the prevailing themes in this series is parental abuse, and that gets more intense in this book. I continue to hate Demeter with a passion, and I feel for her daughters. We get to see Psyche really playing the world and presenting a face for the cameras, and how good she is at it. Eros as his mother’s enforcer is equally interesting, and I just love a guy who immediately falls for the first woman who is nice to him. I equally love that Psyche sees a trained killer and feels compassion for him. The story is really about two damaged people finding themselves together, and I’m a sucker for that stuff.
In terms of things that disappointed me, there’s quite a bit. Electric Idol is a reminder to me that I can enjoy reading a book and think parts of it are really solid while having issues with other parts! One of the biggest problems with this book is one that we saw in Neon Gods, the issue of world-building. Most readers know that exposition dumps can take you out of the story, but a lack of context can be just as distracting. The biggest, most consistent problem I have with these books is that there is just so little explanation of the world of the story. We know that Olympus is a real place, and the Underworld is like another district, and the Olympians have dominion over the city. The titles of the gods pass to new people periodically, and the three elder gods, Hades, Poseidon and Zeus are passed from parent to child. Each Olympian rules over their own domain, but that’s pretty much all we get. That’s all she wrote, folks. There does appear to be an outside world, as Persephone has a plan to escape the city and go to the mundane world, but that’s pretty much all we know. One of the most fun parts of retellings is seeing how they are different, and how the author choses to interpret the original story. I would say this book continues the sort of mobster romance vibe the first book had, though it’s way less kinky than the first one. Neon Gods definitely has a more BDSM tone, and this one is just garden variety erotica. I wasn’t disappointed by that, I think it’s good for the story and works for the characters, but it is a change in tone between books.
I was also disappointed that the next book isn’t about the next of Demeter’s daughters. I’m excited to see what comes next in the story, but it is a little weird that the first two books are about two people from the same family, and at least the next book is unrelated to them. Still, the next book is about a big upset politically, so that might mean we get to understand a little more about how the world works. Personally, I think if you go into it just looking for romance and don’t think too much about the mythology, you can enjoy it as it is.
This reviewer was given an advanced readers’ copy in exchange for an honest review. Electric Idol can be purchased wherever books are sold, or borrowed from your local library.
The Chamber of Spoilers 