Oracle’s War is the follow on from Athena’s Champion and while it can be read as a stand-alone, there will be quite a few points that will seem a bit disjointed. I’d recommend reading Athena’s War first.

Here, Odysseus’ sister is about to get married, but the wedding is suddenly called off and she marries someone else.

Odysseus believes a sorcerer had a hand in this upset and as a Gods honour has been besmirched he journeys to put an end to her meddling.

To say this is action packed is an understatement. It’s great characters have plots within plots as they prepare for war.....A must read for fans of Greek mythology.

Exciting continuation of the series. Looking forward to the next book.

Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC without obligation.

What an enjoyable read!
This series is a prequel to Homer's The Iliad and the South of the Trojan Wars, following the early years of Odysseus and fusing the known legend with Greek fantasy of warring gods and their adoption of certain humans to act on their behalf.
In Oracle's War, Odysseus and his fellow warriors fight to save their homeland from the dominance of Troy. Odysseus is still to become the master schemer of the Trojan War, but is honing his skills and talents and already has a reputation as a cunning warrior beloved of the gods.
This is a wonderful story, the second in the series, told in the great tradition of Homer, fusing the authors' historical knowledge of ancient Greece with the fantasy of the Greek gods and the literary genius of The Iliad. A thoroughly enjoyable and absorbing story that I cannot recommend highly enough.

Odysseus, the Ithacan Prince, sworn to Athena has finally settled into his altered home life after discovering his father is actually Sisyphus, instead of the King of Ithaca, Laertes. Relations between him and his family change again when his sister's betrothal is broke and she is married to a man against her wishes. Seeking retribution, Odysseus is swept into a battle for the future of Achaea against Troy, even battling himself as he loves a Trojan Princess.

Second in the series, this book is action packed and amazing. Characters start to feel familiar and the story is wonderfully woven. I really enjoyed it!

I received a copy of this title via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This book is a continuation of the tale of Odysseus. The first installment of this series, Athena's Champion, provides key content for being able to follow the action in this new title. It can be read as a stand alone but it isn't advisable. I praise the authors for bringing a fresh perspective to well-worn mythological tales. There is definite improvement of presentation in this 2nd installment. The language doesn't seem as disjointed as in the first book and it has better flow. Both books in the series are fast paced, enjoyable reads.

Very interesting read.
I liked it alot.
It was interesting take on mythology, even though i've not read the first one.

I am brushing up my mythology lessons, thanks to this amazing series revolving around Odysseus. I had the pleasure of reading 'Athena's Champion' a few months back and the second instalment doesn't disappoint at all. And this has taken me to previously uncharted territory, the war of the Epigoni against the unpenetrable walls of Thebes. Though I haven't found any reference to Odysseus participating in the war in the original story, this fictional rethinking is nothing but brilliant.
Finally, we have got a reference to Penelope even with the surprising twist. And the role of Tiresias . . . Oh! It was sad to picture the protagonist of 'Wasteland' as a villain, but isn't that clever? As for Odysseus, we got ample proof for his cunning brilliance in the first book itself, and here we find the teenage boy matured evolving into the ruler and strategist he is known for.
But how authors are going to wrap this story with a single last book is something I would look forward to. We have a great war to win after all. So gear up folks and don't forget to read these first two books in the series. You will find your mythology taste buds adequately satisfied . . . that is until the coming of the last book 😉

Thank you so much to Canelo and NetGalley for the invitation to read Oracle's War by David Hair and Cath Mayo.

My apologies for turning in a late review!

Oracle's War is the sequel to Athena's Champion, and it is definitely necessary to read them in order. Speaking of, right now I can't wait to read the third book!!!

Odysseus is now a little older and a little wiser, on a quest to salvage his family's honor after his sister's wedding debacle. The most powerful seer in history is blinding the oracles to keep Thebes safe, and Odysseus ends up goading the Epigoni into war.

Enough summary! I am so excited to have our first mention of Penelope, even though her entrance was a bit of a shocker! I can't wait to see what her role is in the third book, as well as Helen and Menelaus. I just love all the characters including the Gods, they are sarcastic and full of testosterone and believable.

The time line is a bit confusing to me ... All I know is that there is going to be a LOT of action in the final installment. There was a ton of action in Oracle's War as well, once I started I ended up devouring it. Besides the characters and the nonstop events, I love how Cath and Mayo put a plausible spin on some of Mythology's biggest plot holes. The Oedipus storyline and the realigning of the Gods are two decent examples.

My biggest question - who in the world is Bria?

I definitely loved this book and am so excited for book 3, 100% recommend this for any fans of mythology!!

My thanks to Canelo for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘Oracle’s War’, the second instalment of the Olympus series by David Hair and Cath Mayo in exchange for an honest review.

The story picks up shortly after the events in ‘Athena’s Champion’, which I would urge newcomers to the series read first as it establishes the characters and settings.

Here Prince Odysseus is sent on a quest to redeem his family’s honour after malicious interference in his sister’s marriage by Tiresias, the greatest seer (and suspected sorcerer) of the age. Odysseus soon finds himself sailing to the island of Delos with his trusted companions.

Delos is the site of an important shrine to Artemis and a new prophecy uttered by a young seeress there has caught the attention of the gods, including his patron Athena. The seeress is being held in seclusion but Odysseus is determined to interview her. Adventures, escapades and a war against the City of Thebes follow.

This was excellent storytelling and draws on the tale of the War of the Epigoni. I had loved the first in the series and yet felt that this exceeded it. There is a great deal of action and intrigue yet it also has humour, which is especially evident in the ongoing banter between Odysseus and his companions, Bria and Diomedes.

Odysseus is such an amazing character and tales of Ancient Greece are certainly in vogue at present with two novels appearing in the 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction shortlist. A useful glossary is included at the end of the narrative.

I am very impressed with this series and will be waiting expectantly for the next in this wonderful series.

The action starts a few months after the events in Athena’s Champion at the occasion of Odysseus’s sister’s wedding – which doesn’t go according to plan and sends him off on a quest to avenge a wrong. I am really fond of this clever young man, whose quick wits save him from death more than once in this fast-moving adventure, where gods are amoral beings, intent on widening their pool of worshippers by any means at their disposal. Being one of their champions isn’t the privileged position you might think, given their nasty habit of using their half-human offspring as disposable agents to influence or alter events to their advantage. We meet up once again with a number of the characters first featured in Athena’s Champion – most notably Bria, another of Athena’s champions, who accompanies Odysseus on this quest. She is inhabiting another body and her lusty, cynical attitude, along with her careless attitude to the body she has invaded, sets Odysseus’s teeth on edge.

I liked learning more of the young man’s rocky relationship with the man who brought him up as his father, King Laertes of Ithaca, in this next slice of the adventure. And I also very much enjoyed the worldbuilding which Hair and Mayo weave in amongst all the double-dealing, life-changing prophecies, sorcery and thrilling fights. They effectively set out the political situation where the rise of the eastern cities, particularly Troy, is destabilising the scattering of states and islands further to the west. Not only is their culture under attack – their gods are in the process of being altered or swallowed up by their eastern counterparts – their financial future is also in jeopardy as traders increasingly drop off their goods at Troy, whose added tariffs are making life increasingly difficult.

We are currently around five years before the Trojan War and a sudden new prophesy has caused a major upset. The young woman who has delivered it is in great demand – and not all those seeking her are wellwishers, so Odysseus finds himself looking after her after she has been snatched. While he is impressed with the grey-eyed young woman, his heart has been stolen by a Trojan princess. This next slice of Odysseus and his adventures is every bit as exciting and vital as the first book. Recommended for fans of well-told Greek myth retellings. The ebook arc copy of Oracle’s War was provided by the publisher through NetGalley in return for an honest opinion of the book.
9/10

I greatly enjoyed this novel! David Hair and Cath Mayo are new-to-me authors, so I wasn't entirely sure what to expect with Oracle's War. But I am so, so glad that I took a chance on something new because I absolutely LOVED this novel! The writing was superb, the story was excellent. The characters were unique, perfectly flawed and grew with the plot. The story itself moved quickly, built upon itself and had me hooked from the very first page. I will be keeping an eye out for these authors in the future!

David Hair and Cath Mayo have done it again! They continue the action-packed tale of Odysseus, this time bringing our epic hero to the gates of Thebes and stop its might from trampling across Achaea. We again see Bria, the lusty daemon who guides Odysseus throughout his quest, and meet Diomedes and his war-hungry, headstrong Argive cousins who walk alongside Odysseus towards their glorious destiny.

While the first of the series, Athena's Champion, was personally the better of the two, I can't deny this one was extremely well researched and well written. It was full of testosterone, but what would you expect from a Greek myth-inspired story? There is no boring moment, despite already knowing the ending beforehand. I particularly enjoyed the theme of family and honor on all sides, from Odysseus himself to the Argive warriors. Overall, this was another fantastic dive into the politics of family, god-worship, and the future of Achaea.

Oracle's War by David Hair and Cath Mayo, a pretty good sequel. The Trojan war is looming and Odysseus has been recruited by Athena to help her small band of hero's improve the chances of the Greeks. Because at this point in time it all points to the Trojans winning.

COMPLEX AND INTELLIGENT, A REAL TREAT OF A BOOK!

I was completely sold by the first book in this series, and this one did not let me down. Rarely have I read a book that felt so intelligent, yet approachable and engaging.

"The more I know of the gods, the less I revere them."
-Odysseus

After having gone to Erebus and back to save the kidnapped princess Helen, Odysseus is back at Ithaca to witness the wedding of his sister, Ctimene, to their childhood friend, Eumaeus. But when the wedding is ruined, Odysseus smells a plot, which leads him to the island of Delos. A new prophetess has emerged at the Delos shrine of Artemis and Athena has an interest in learning of her prophecy. Once again Odysseus teams up with the daemon Bria and they are joined by Athena's newest champion, Diomedes. The new prophecy takes them all the way to the famed, unpenetrable walls of Thebes.

THE GOOD STUFF

The mythology: One of my favourite parts of the first book was without a doubt the complexity of the world and mythology. I loved how the authors had reworked the mythology to account for some of the inconsistencies, that we often see in Greek mythology (such as the origin of Aphrodite or Apollo's emergence as a sun god in stead of Helios). This also added an extra layer of politics and rivalry between the gods, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

"[...] they're thinking about escape more than victory. That's how you lose."

The intelligence: I often read others describe books as 'intelligent' and I often just shake my head and laugh it off. But now, it is my turn to say "this is one seriously intelligent book!". I would like to elaborate. Greek mythology is, at best, slightly complicated and somewhat confusing. It takes real intelligence to make it sensible and relatable. But that's not the only thing, that impressed me and made me think of this book as intelligent. The plot in itself integrated many different legends and heroes, and, combined with the mythology, that could have been very overwhelming if it wasn't done right. But it totally was! That takes some serious intelligence, to piece all of tha together seemlessly.

The mystery of Bria: The first book introduced us to the mystery of Bria's circumstances - who/what is she, and how did she come to be that? Well, this book doesn't answer that question, it only adds another layer of mystery, and even though it is a somewhat minor part of the story, it is something that really caught my attention and got me thinking. I really want to know the answer!

THE NOT SO GOOD STUFF

The disconnect: Maybe this is only something that bothers me because I am familiar with the legend of Helen and her marriage to Menelaus, but for me, it seemed as if the story in the first book wasn't finished. It felt unresolved because we didn't get to the part about Helen and Menelaus' marriage, how that came to be and the role that Odysseus played in it. So this book almost felt like a new story that was somewhat unrelated to the first book, apart from the characters anyway. But since the story of Helen and Menelaus is essential to the Trojan war - which this series seems to be leading up to - I have faith that we will see Helen again in the 3rd book.

I loved this book as much as I loved the first installment in this series.
It's fascinating and entertaining, there's an amazing world building, and the characters are interesting.
I look forward to read other books by this author.
Many thanks to Canelo and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

The day the final novel of The Olympus Series and George R.R. Martin’s next World of Ice and Fire installment hits the shelves will, without a doubt, be the worst day of my life.

I would be pulling out clumps of hair in trying to decide which copy to buy first.

David Hair and Cath Mayo make a hell of a team, quite literally drenching the world of the Olympus Series in tomes of lore so much so that I ended up getting a copy of Stephen Fry’s Mythos just to try and keep up with the gods and their descendants. And man, the gods and their followers are fickle creatures, employing scandals, schemes, and betrayals with such abundance that you’d think it will be a cold world if these ancient deities still walked today – should they physically manifest themselves, that is.

The characters in the series are written with such off-the-page originality that this makes them incredibly dynamic and three-dimensional. It’s apparent how much effort David and Cath have both put into the thoughts that brought these individuals to life as each character is so embroiled in their own hidden agendas that I wouldn’t be surprised if we’d start seeing novellas about many of them, if only to give us more insight into their backgrounds or what they got up to in their own secret adventures (I am deliberately thinking about a particular body-jumping daemon here).

With plenty of political intrigue, petty sibling rivalry, squabbling princes eager to boost their egos, and old gods clinging to lost times and forgotten worshippers, Oracle’s War is a great novel you definitely don’t want to miss out on. It is, without a doubt, part of a story that’s worth good money and a few hours of reading indulgence.

In the second book of the Olympus Series, Odysseus, one of Athena's champions, finds himself caught between conflicting prophecies. What was supposed to be the happy wedding day of his sister to her beloved turns into a nightmare brought about by the hands of a meddling, powerful seer and sorcerer, Tiresias, who wants Odysseus to go after him for his own purposes. Ordered to go after the seer by his father and his patron goddess, Odysseus quickly finds himself on his way with the daemon Bria, Athena's newest champion Diomedes, his faithful servant and friend Eurybates, and several Ithacan soldiers to the island Delos, where a novice had a spontaneous prophecy that suggests impregnable Thebes is not so impregnable, and the sons of the seven men who marched on Thebes only to be slaughtered stand a chance of recovering their family's honor. Odysseus finds himself with no choice but to convince them to go to war, all while Tiresias will do everything in his power to destroy Odysseus and ensure the rogue prophecy fails to come to pass.

Oracle's War is a nice follow up to Athena's Champion. Like the first book, it strings together several stories of mythology and ancient Greece to present a coherent and well-reasoned out story. Indeed, it fleshes out the stories and makes them more interesting, and easier to follow as sometimes the stories become convoluted with too many names and places. I don't know what ancient Greece might have been like, but Hair and Mayo present many possibilities that could have actually happened, especially when it comes to war.

Actually, that's the one thing that I wasn't fond of. Of course, I see the war as being a necessary and large part of the story, but the graphic detail of the battles and pointless pillaging was unsettling. I might wish there had been less of it or that it was glossed over, but it would have taken away from the feel of the book, the story the authors were telling, and made the historical fantasy part that much less authentic. Still, it is unsettling and comprises a good chunk of the book.

There were 3 things I wasn't fond of in the first book: 1) I felt too many liberties had been taken with the stories, 2) the weird modern impression I got from it, and 3) the romance between Odysseus and Kyshanda. This time around, I don't have the same complaints. Whether this is because it wasn't as evident or because I knew what to expect and my mind could be more forgiving, I'm not sure. But I did enjoy this book much more than the first. I also am not as familiar with the Seven Against Thebes story, so it was interesting to read about as well as how the sons were able to avenge their fathers.

The characters were interesting. The setting was well-described. The plot moved along at a good pace. Nothing superfluous happened. This book has what I like to think of as internal validity (I don't think it's real outside of the sciences and this may not an accurate use of the term, but it makes perfect sense in my head), meaning everything made sense, everything fit together, everything that was present in the first half came full circle in the second half, and there was nothing pointless presented just to make the story longer or more interesting. I love books with internal validity (again, I probably just made this up). Actually, I got so excited to see something presented in the first half pop up in the second half that I had to put the book down for a little bit just so I would be able to fully enjoy the scene. It was glorious. And Odysseus is a genius.

Oracle's War is as stunning as the first book. But, where I didn't entirely enjoy the first book, I'm glad to say I loved the second book, and I look forward to the rest of the series. It's set to be a trilogy, but I hope there will be more books beyond that.



Thank you so much to NetGalley and the publisher, Canelo, for a free copy of this book. All opinions are my own. Oracle's War is due to be published on April 29, 2019.

This is the second book in the Olympus Series. Hair and Mayo have written another thriller. I enjoyed the book. The historical perspective was perfect. I felt like I was transported back to ancient Greece.

A huge thank you to NetGalley and Canelo for providing me with an ARC of this book. I really enjoyed the first book in the series and so was very excited to be offered the opportunity to read and review this sequel!

Oracle’s War is the second book in the Olympus Trilogy by David Hair and Cath Mayo. The first book is Athena's Champion where Odysseus learns he is a theoi and starts going on dangerous missions for Athena. Oracle's War continues Odysseus, Bria, and Athena's journey. Odysseus and Bria are once again sent off on a dangerous mission without knowing the full reason why. It's a fast-paced and interesting story filled with family drama, political intrigue, war, strategy, and morality. This series is fascinating, and I can't wait to see how it continues.