The Nature of Gods: The Awakening
When gods and goddesses abruptly overthrow Earth, humans are given two choices – worship or die. Desperate to survive, Olivia and her family devote their days to fulfilling the will of the gods. But the wrath of the gods is insatiable and unpredictable. With her hope crushed, Olivia is resigned to her bleak fate . . . until she meets Nature.
Immediately, Olivia knows this charismatic girl with color-changing eyes isn’t normal. Nature looks like a teenager yet she has the power to control the weather and converse with animals. Nature opens Olivia’s eyes to a hidden world that had always existed in harmony with her own. However, obnoxious butterflies and mystical creatures aren’t the only secrets revealed as Olivia discovers the dark plan of the gods.
When Nature decides to confront the gods, Olivia is catapulted to the forefront of humanity’s battle for survival. Faced with monster-infested pathways and ever-looming traps, Olivia must discover her own bravery and strength. But do these two girls have enough courage or skill to battle brutal gods eager to dole out punishment? The world depends on it.
D. J. Torres has this creative way of using words as if she’s putting paint on a canvas which works very well when her main character, Olivia is an artist. Her flamboyant imagery in how she describes the way Olivia sees the world made me think I was touring an art gallery with her settings hanging on the walls.
Her dialogue is perfect, even the way she seamlessly weaves what Olivia is thinking with the conversations around her. She has developed her main characters so well, particularly Olivia, you feel like you’re right there walking alongside them on their adventures.
I have to admit I got a bit thrown because the story went from 0 to 100 practically right away with the whole Greek Gods suddenly appearing and demanding constant worship or death and all the characters felt as confused about it as I did. Olivia went from being the girl that gets bullied just because she exists to suddenly being pushed into a romance with the high school version of McDreamy which seemed incredibly unrealistic; even Olivia seemed to feel that but if Keanu Reeves taught us anything in Speed, love can blossom under traumatic experience. Still her whole head over heels thing that kept getting brought up seemed hard to believe but that’s me the adult speaking, I’m sure if I had to be honest with myself at her age I probably fell completely in love too in a way that made adults shake their heads. Once the character of Nature entered the story the trippy, LSD like, confused feeling continued. I couldn’t stop reading though because the imagery was so attention grabbing and beautiful I wanted to wallow in this new world order.
I loved that we had 2 female characters heading up this story and thankfully Nature is a bad ass since Olivia even with her cool artsy ways is still a love sick teenager.
Honestly I think Rick Riordan made it hard for me to enjoy this more. His whole series on Greek Gods seems to have caused permanent and widespread influences on my view of Greek Gods in children’s fantasy literature.
I think the age bracket it’s designed for will like it but Riordan’s influence is strong and that may affect how this is accepted which is a shame because the writing really is very beautiful.
Thank you to Netgalley and Weapenry Co-Opfor allowing me to review this book.
*synopsis and pic from netgalley.com