Gods of Olympus Volume 3

Seven of the most distinctive Olympian gods. Seven complete novels. One volume.Apollo — God of the sun, music, prophecy, and medicine. The most accomplished of all possible divine beings — and the one who loved most disastrously. Daphne became a laurel rather than submit to him. Cassandra received the gift of prophecy and the curse that no one would believe her. He was brilliant and he was catastrophic and both came from the same source.Ares — The god of war whom the Greeks did not particularly like. Raw, immediate, entirely himself. He was the war itself rather than the strategy that organized the war. He loved Aphrodite genuinely. He was wounded by Diomedes on the same day Aphrodite was. He was the most honest god on Olympus — the only one who expressed exactly what he was without management or mediation.Hermes — The messenger, the trickster, the guide of souls to the underworld, the god of travelers and thieves and boundaries. He moved between all worlds with complete ease. He had stolen Apollo's cattle on the day he was born. He was the most genuinely present of all possible divine beings — always in transit, always at the threshold, belonging everywhere and nowhere simultaneously.Hephaestus — He was thrown from Olympus — by Hera or by Zeus depending on the account — and he limped and he made the most beautiful things in the world. The net that caught Ares and Aphrodite. The armor of Achilles. The palace of the gods. He was the craftsman who had been rejected by the world that benefited most from his craft.Dionysus — He was born twice — from his mother Semele and then from Zeus's thigh. He was the last god to arrive on Olympus and the one who had been most violently resisted. He brought wine and ecstasy and the dissolution of the ordinary self. He was also the most compassionate of all the Olympians. Both came from the same experience of having been the outsider.Persephone — She was taken. The abduction organized the seasons and organized the underworld and organized the relationship between the living and the dead. She was queen of the underworld for half of every year. The tradition preserved her primarily as a victim. She was also a queen — genuinely sovereign in the realm she had not chosen and had made entirely her own.Hecate — She was older than the Olympians. She held power over heaven and earth and sea. She stood at the crossroads with her torches. She was the goddess of magic and witchcraft and the night and the moon and ghosts. She had helped Demeter search for Persephone. She was the most genuinely liminal of all possible divine beings — at every threshold, belonging to every realm, confined to none.Seven complete works of literary mythology fiction from I. Ioakim's Gods of Olympus series.