Erynn Du / Staff Reporter
Written and illustrated by Rachel Smythe, Lore Olympus is a re-telling of the Greek myth of Hades and Persephone. Persephone is a sheltered young girl who travels to the city of Olympus, away from her overprotective mother in the mortal realm. In Olympus, she is exposed to what the gods are really like, and just how cruel some can be. In this story, Smythe tells a tale of tragedy, betrayal, romance, and friendship.
In the first pages, we are introduced to Hades, the seemingly all-powerful King of the underworld, but it turns out that he is just a pushover who’s abused by his girlfriend. He’s all alone at the party, and it seems everybody else has come with a date. Then, Persephone is introduced in the next panels. In the view of Hades, he sees a nervous young goddess by herself in a small dress. With his brothers, Zeus and Poseidon, he jokes about how Persephone puts Aphrodite to shame. The god of beauty, Aphrodite, is not pleased, and retaliates by having her son Eros put Persephone in Hades’s car. The plan was for Persephone to embarrass herself by being drunk, and for her to think Hades was a weird old man who took her home. This is when their relationship starts developing romantically.
The book is illustrated with gorgeous colours, and Rachel Smythe does a great job of building the plot. You root for Persephone’s journey of discovering herself through the quirky and fun dialogue of her and the other characters. The story is satisfying to read with drama and suspense; however, I start feeling uncomfortable a few chapters in. Later on, it is revealed that Persephone is only nineteen, and Hades is two thousand years old. Yes, they are immortal gods, and this is fiction. However, they are portrayed as humans. Rachel Smythe writes the characters like they do not have such a large age gap, so you can continue reading if you try to ignore it. It’s conflicting, because Lore Olympus is a beautiful story, but the way Hades views her cannot be ignored. In the beginning it is understandable that he sees sex appeal in Persephone. But as the story goes on and he learns that she is nineteen, he doesn’t stop seeing her that way. You want to root for Hades, because he is charming and respects her, but his view of her is often oversexualized in the artwork. Overall, I still recommend Lore Olympus to anybody who enjoys beautiful artwork and amazing characters, but the weird sex appeal Hades views her with as such a young girl is disturbing.