Abandon by Meg Cabot, as seen on Amazon.com
After having read countless books about witches and vampires, it was time to move on to different types of creatures. Death Gods seemed like such a novel concept.
I loved this book. It was so very good. I read this at the darkest time of my life where everything seemed grey. After having read the book, I felt better.
The book is a retelling of the Hades/Persephone story of Greek mythology. Here is what Wikipedia had to say about the myth:
Persephone used to live far away from the other deities, a goddess within Nature herself before the days of planting seeds and nurturing plants. In the Olympian telling, the gods Hermes and Apollo had wooed Persephone; but Demeter rejected all their gifts and hid her daughter away from the company of the Olympian deities.[69] The story of her abduction by Hades against her will, is traditionally referred to as the Rape of Persephone. It is mentioned briefly in Hesiod’s Theogony,[70] and told in considerable detail in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. Zeus, it is said, permitted Hades who was in love with the beautiful Persephone, to carry her off, as her mother Demeter, was not likely to allow her daughter to go down to Hades. Persephone was gathering flowers with the Oceanids along with Artemis andAthena—the Homeric Hymn says—in a field when Hades came to abduct her, bursting through a cleft in the earth.[71] Demeter, when she found her daughter had disappeared, searched for her all over the earth with torches. In most versions she forbids the earth to produce, or she neglects the earth and in the depth of her despair she causes nothing to grow. Helios, the sun, who sees everything, eventually told Demeter what had happened and at length she discovered the place of her abode. Finally, Zeus, pressed by the cries of the hungry people and by the other deities who also heard their anguish, forced Hades to return Persephone.[72]
Hades indeed complied with the request, but first he tricked her, giving her some pomegranate seeds to eat. Persephone was released by Hermes, who had been sent to retrieve her, but because she had tasted food in the underworld, she was obliged to spend a third of each year (the winter months) there, and the remaining part of the year with the gods above.[73] With the later writers Ovid and Hyginus, Persephone’s time in the underworld becomes half the year.[74]
The story of Abandon as described on Amazon.com:
New from #1 New York Times bestselling author Meg Cabot, a dark, fantastical story about this world . . . and the underworld.
Though she tries returning to the life she knew before the accident, Pierce can’t help but feel at once a part of this world, and apart from it. Yet she’s never alone . . . because someone is always watching her. Escape from the realm of the dead is impossible when someone there wants you back.
But now she’s moved to a new town. Maybe at her new school, she can start fresh. Maybe she can stop feeling so afraid.
Only she can’t. Because even here, he finds her. That’s how desperately he wants her back. She knows he’s no guardian angel, and his dark world isn’t exactly heaven, yet she can’t stay away . . . especially since he always appears when she least expects it, but exactly when she needs him most.
But if she lets herself fall any further, she may just find herself back in the one place she most fears: the Underworld
This book is not like Eat, Pray, Love. You will read it and want to finish it. I highly recommend this book. I give it two thumbs up. The underworld is a fascinating universe which will be explored even further in Abandon #2: Underworld.
How about you? Are you vamped out and witched out? Do you like the new trend of books inspired by mythology?
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