In the cutthroat, brutally captivating world of Alexandra Bracken's standalone fantasy Lore, nine Greek gods are punished for betraying Zeus, king of the gods. "For seven days at the turn of seven years," the shamed gods are forced to take part in the "Agon," in which they walk the Earth as mortals. Every moment of that week, they are hunted by the descendants of ancient Greece's greatest heroes, all seeking to kill a god and claim their immortality and power. Lore, the last surviving member of the House of Perseus, however, turned her back on the Agon after rival hunters murdered her family in the last hunt. As the new Agon begins in New York City, Athena, one of the remaining original gods, approaches Lore with an offer of alliance--and revenge--against the Perseides' killer. "Despite her best efforts to move on," Lore is drawn back into the Agon, where she'll have "to forget the shadowed life she'd left behind and step into the sunlight of a new, better one."
The pacing is relentless, carrying Lore and her allies from one fight to the next against a backdrop of escalating stakes, while still leaving room for quieter moments of character growth. Bracken (The Darkest Minds series; The Dreadful Tale of Prosper Redding) also uses Lore to challenge the patriarchal undertones of Greek mythology--where women are assaulted, brutalized and discarded--in an empowering tale of a young woman embracing her righteous rage. For years, Lore has repressed her anger "making it smaller, making it feel irrelevant and undeserved," but now "she held on to the sharp hurt inside her and didn't pull away. She held firm, waiting for her claws to come back to her." --Alanna Felton, 19