In this “witty and entertaining” twist on Greek mythology (James Urquhart), the once all-powerful gods find themselves scraping by in a run-down London townhouse as they learn how to be human—and try not to destroy the world in the process.
Being a Greek god is not all it once was. Yes, the twelve gods of Olympus are alive and well in the twenty-first century, but they are crammed together in a London townhouse—and none too happy about it. And they've had to get day jobs: Artemis as a dog-walker, Apollo as a TV psychic, Aphrodite as a phone sex operator, Dionysus as a DJ.
Even more disturbingly, their powers are waning, and even turning mortals into trees—a favorite pastime of Apollo's—is sapping their vital reserves of strength.
Soon, what begins as a minor squabble between Aphrodite and Apollo escalates into an epic battle of wills. Two perplexed humans, Alice and Neil, who are caught in the crossfire, must fear not only for their own lives, but for the survival of humankind. Nothing less than a true act of heroism is needed—but can these two decidedly ordinary people replicate the feats of the mythical heroes and save the world?
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"Artemis, great huntress, ravager of defiling men, chaste guardian of the moon, leader of the hunt amidst the unspoiled and serene wilds, wears a track suit and walks inbred dogs. At least, in modern times she does. She and her Olympian family have been forced to relocate to a crumbling house in London, expelled by the rise of Christianity from their Greek homeland and the minds of humans. To make ends meet, the gods must labor like the poor schlubs they would torment in the good old days. Aphrodite works as a phone sex operator; Apollo, when not transmogrifying rebuffing conquests into trees, tries rather vaingloriously and unsuccessfully to be a TV psychic. Hermes is a workaholic, having been drafted in earlier times as the god of money, he never gets to stop in the modern age of financial worship. Demeter is withering like the plants she struggles to tend, and nobody has seen Zeus or Hera in some time. To say the Olympian family has fallen from lofty heights would be something of an understatement.
However Gods Behaving Badly is not just about the pouting and insouciant downward plunge of faded deities. It is a love story. A love story of the grandiosely small scale. The main characters are pathetically human, not so very gifted with looks or wealth or power, even if the female is an absurdly astute Scrabble player. Such verbose acumen does not prevent her from being a pawn of the gods, cast into schemings and vengeance different from times past only in that the scale of power is significantly less (all the gods are a bit paranoid about wasting what little power they have left, not withstanding Apollo's retribution when his vanity is snubbed).
How is it then that the fate of the world comes to reside in one rather innocuous mortal's ken? The gods screwed up...again, that's how. One would think that immortal beings on the verge of becoming not-so-immortal would harken to a greater sense of...well, something other than petty jealousy and revenge. One would think. And be wrong.
Full of wit and snark and joyous mythological winks and groans, Phillips has crafted a tale in the very spirit of the Greek myths, layering the blatant narcissism and self-interest of the gods over the poor humans who populate their shrinking playground. Anybody have the number for Aphrodite's direct line?"
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Cameron (4 out of 5 stars)