Daughter of chaos

A young woman with humble origins faces down monsters and gods in this debut fantasy inspired by Greek mythology. Danae has never questioned the will of the Twelve, the gods who rule over Greece from Olympus, even when Demeter demands blood sacrifices from Danae's small fishing community. When a series of traumatic events strikes her family and she experiences an intense vision of a tree bearing golden apples, she is flung across Greece in search of answers, from the famed oracle at Delphi to the voyage of Jason and his Argonauts to the Caucasus Mountains. Along the way, she learns that not only are the gods fallible but Danae may be at the center of a prophecy predicting the end of their reign. Danae must learn how to harness strange, new magical abilities while evading the wrath of the Twelve, who will stop at nothing to destroy her. This page-turner integrates many Greek myths but creates an entirely new story for its intrepid heroine. Off-page occurrences of sexual assault and suicide should be noted by readers sensitive to those topics.

Playing fast and loose with both Greek myth and ancient history, Webb debuts with a chaotic and disappointing feminist coming-of-power story, the first in her Dark Pantheon Trilogy. Teenage Danae, the outspoken second daughter of a Naxos fisherman, resents her village's blind acceptance of the cruel 12-god Olympian pantheon that demands human sacrifice. Then her sister, Alea, is mysteriously abducted by the gods, impregnated, and returned to the village, where she is shunned by her fellow mortals and driven to suicide. This spurs Danae onto a vengeful odyssey of violent adventures, each marked by a mystical experience in which she gradually takes possession of her prophesied unearthly powers to free humanity from the gods. Despite Webb's heroic efforts to broaden Danae's shallow growing-up tale to epic proportions, there's a YA feeling to this. Off-key invocations of mythological figures and places often fail to resonate, and the girl power themes feel shoehorned in, failing to engage with actual history. Considering the glut of Greek mythological retellings, readers will be better served elsewhere. (Jan.)