THE GODDESS LEGACY by Aimee Carter

The Goddess Legacy
Aimee Carter

Rating: A
Release Date: 07/31/12
Synopsis from goodreads.com: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.


My thoughts on the book:
This is one of the best collections of short stories I've ever read. Carter does an excellent job telling each character's story. I feel that I know the supporting characters much better now that I've read The Goddess Legacy. I understand their actions better, and I can appreciate their individual personalities more. These tales seem to serve as prequels to the events of The Goddess Test. They tell what happened to each character before Kate was in the picture. There was plenty going on in each chapter. The pacing was perfect. I wasn't bored during any of the sections. While I loved every story, my two favorites were James' story and Hades' story. 

I felt bad for Calliope because of what Zeus put her through. None of these stories are happy, but she seems to be treated the worst. Even though I also had some sympathy for Persephone after reading her tale, I still don't like her, and I still think she's a big jerk for what she did to Hades. In mythology, she's one of my favorites, but in Carter's world, I do not like her one bit. 

James' story surprised me the most. He ended up being a much more complex character than I've been giving him credit for. I really adored his story, and I enjoyed learning how he got his new name. My heart broke for him toward the end, and I was even mad at Hades for holding such a freaking grudge. However, James is strong and much more noble than I'd thought he was. Needless to say, I like him more now than I did before. 

Hades' story is sad, and it was difficult reading about his feelings of hopelessness. His story tells how Kate came to be and kind of leads up to the beginning of The Goddess Test. He is such a selfless character in some ways, but in others, he is completely selfish. Before Kate even knows him, she already impacts his life and makes him become a better person. This story really helped me see how much he loves her. Sometimes it's hard to tell whether he loves her or not because The Goddess Test and Goddess Interrupted follow Kate's perspective. Hades makes a lot of mistakes because of his self-loathing, but I now love him even more than I did before.

Overall, I'd recommend this short story collection to anyone who loves good stories based on Greek mythology. I'm a complete mythology dork, and the straying from the actual myths doesn't bother me. Carter acknowledges the myths in her writing, but she disputes them. I really enjoy this series, and The Goddess Legacy adds even more depth to the rich world that Carter has created. 

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