The Games Gods Play

In The Games Gods Play, Abigail Owen repurposes classical depictions of the Greek pantheon of gods and goddesses and adapts them to a modern setting. The core premises of the classical myths remains the same: Zeus, god of the skies and lightning, is brother to Poseidon, god of the seas, and Hades, god of death and king of the Underworld. Perpetually at odds with one another, their family often devolves into dangerous conflicts led by their volatile temperaments. The other members of the pantheon largely retain their classical identities: Apollo and Artemis are twin siblings; Aphrodite is the goddess of love; Ares is the god of war; Athena is the goddess of wisdom and war; and Hermes is the god of thieves. However, the inter-deity dynamics are not clearly defined or inspired by the classic tales, which saw, for instance, Aphrodite emerge from the sea, become Ares’s lover, and marry Hephaestus. The Titans—a cornerstone of the origin of the Greek deities in classical myths—also remain mysterious: Though Hades notably makes a throwaway comment in Owen’s narrative about his father (“Could be worse. […] You could have been swallowed alive as a baby by your Titan father” [300]), Owen’s narrative doesn’t clearly use Cronos’s myth, which sees infant Zeus hidden away until returning to defeat Cronos and save his siblings, whom Cronos had consumed.