Publisher: Flux
Series: None
Format: e-ARC
Source: Netgalley
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The Huntresses of Artemis must obey two rules: never disobey the goddess, and never fall in love. After being rescued from a harrowing life as an Oracle of Delphi, Kahina is glad to be a part of the Hunt; living among a group of female warriors gives her a chance to reclaim her strength, even while her prophetic powers linger. But when a routine mission goes awry, Kahina breaks the first rule in order to save the legendary huntress Atalanta.
To earn back Artemis’s favor, Kahina must complete a dangerous task in the kingdom of Arkadia— where the king’s daughter is revealed to be none other than Atalanta. Still reeling from her disastrous quest and her father’s insistence on marriage, Atalanta isn’t sure what to make of Kahina. As her connection to Atalanta deepens, Kahina finds herself in danger of breaking Artemis’ second rule.
She helps Atalanta devise a dangerous game to avoid marriage, and word spreads throughout Greece, attracting suitors willing to tempt fate to go up against Atalanta in a race for her hand. But when the men responsible for both the girls’ dark pasts arrive, the game turns deadly.
**I received this book free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.**
This was one of those books that I desperately wanted to love, but it ended up being very 'meh' to me for a few reasons. I absolutely LOVE Greek mythology, and the premise of this sounded so wonderful-Artemis and her Huntresses, a F/F relationship, and two women running from their past. Those elements should have made for a fantastic story, but it was just poorly executed.
To start, obviously books that are based on mythologies are very loosely based, but I feel like too many things were so out of the time period, that it just made me roll my eyes. The word insane is used, and there are talks about using forks properly. I'm pretty sure forks were used after the period this book references. Atalanta also mentioned a lieutenant which was also not present during that time.
Character wise, Kahina was my favorite. Her POV was so much more interesting than Atalanta's. I wish the entire book had been done in her POV because I really wasn't interested in Atalanta's side. On the outside Atalanta is supposed to be this feared huntress, but we never find out what she did to gain that status. We only know that she impressed Prince Meleager enough to have him invite her to his hunting team. Nothing else is really explained. We do not get a lot of backstory on her except that she was raised by fearsome hunters. Kahina's character had more depth to her story. She was kidnapped by her cousin and sold to become the Oracle of Delphi where she was rescued by Artemis and her Huntresses. To me, she was much more fearsome than Atalanta, but whatever.
Kahina and Atalanta's relationship was also sadly poorly done. I love how it started off as a metal hatred for each other, although it started off with Kahina hating Atalanta for reasons we know of. The only thing wrong with their relationship is that it happened literally out of nowhere for Atalanta, but you could tell that Kahina was slowly developing feelings for Kahina. I did not read about any developing feelings for Kahina from Atalanta until a certain scene happened, which was very close to the end of the story.
Basically I was left with a lot of unanswered questions from the story. Why did Artemis want Atalanta so badly when we never find out why she is such a great huntress? What did she do to convince Meleager to let her join him? What happened to Arkadia and her father at the end of the story? Too many things just were not really explained well (or at all).
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