The Games Gods Play

The Games Gods Play is the first installment in the Crucible series written by New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Abigail Owen. Published on September 3, 2024, The Games Gods Play has a sequel, The Things Gods Break, set for publication in September 2025. The Games Gods Play is part of the growing romantasy movement, which combines the romance and new adult fantasy genres. Owen’s work is reminiscent of such titles as Jasmine Mas’s Villains of Lore series and Rebecca Yarros’s The Empyrean series mixed with Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games trilogy and Kerri Maniscalco’s Kingdom of the Wicked trilogy. A prolific writer, Owen has written other well-known series, such as her Dominions trilogy, also of the romantasy genre, and her Inferno Rising series, which attends to mystical shifters. In The Games Gods Play, however, Owen lands firmly in the land of Greek gods and mythic romances, as Lyra, a failed thief cursed to be unlovable, is chosen by Hades to be his champion in the Crucible—a dangerous festival of Labors used to choose the next King of the Gods. Faced with monsters and terrifying gods, Lyra must find a way to win and navigate her conflicted feelings about the alluring god of death, Hades. Emphasizing the resilience of human nature and the importance of connection, Owen crafts a plot filled with twists and turns, complicating the relationship between Lyra and Hades.

This guide refers to the 2024 Red Tower Books e-book edition.

Content Warning: This novel and guide reference child abuse, emotional abuse, and death.

Plot Summary

On the eve of the Crucible, the famed festival by which the new King or Queen of the Gods is selected, Lyra Keres, a member of the Order of Thieves, stalks the masses and keeps an eye on the Order’s pledges as they steal valuables from unsuspecting bystanders. While most are enthralled by Zeus’s temple’s electric display, Lyra feels anger and resentment for the patron god of her city; after he cursed her in the womb to be unlovable, she has experienced loneliness and isolation. She never made friends or felt reciprocal love, including from her crush, master thief Boone Runar. In a fit of anger, Lyra looks to damage Zeus’s temple and confront him—only to come across the god of death, Hades. Their meeting isn’t happenstance, however: Unbeknownst to her, Hades knew of her existence. When the gods’ champions are called to the stage individually, Hades shocks the world by participating and choosing Lyra to be his champion without her consent. Hades, however, makes a bargain with Lyra: If she helps him win the Crucible, he will break her curse for her.

As the gods and champions meet, Lyra is aware of how ostracized she is by her association with Hades. In a show of power, Hades dressed her in an all-black ensemble with a tiara with Persephone’s six legendary pomegranate seeds. Yet as the first trial to win their relic and gift from their gods, Lyra finds herself helping her fellow champions, despite retaliation from Ares. Lyra wins her relic—summoning tattoos—and gift—Hades’s mark—which allows her to roam the Underworld unhindered. The mark, however, came at the exchange of a passionate kiss—one that affects both Lyra and Hades. That night, however, Lyra is visited by Boone, who, out of concern for her, gives her the relic he received when becoming a master thief—dragon teeth—and the mysterious relic that appeared for Lyra despite only being an office clerk for the Order—Odin’s axe.

During the first Labor, where Poseidon has the champions face off against sea creatures, Isabel, Poseidon’s champion, dies. The brutality of the Labor shows Lyra that she must acquire allies, and in her search, she meets Aphrodite, who offers her an insight into her Labor: It will involve the person the champions love the most. Lyra then stumbles on Zai Aridam, Hermes’s champion and son of the previous winner of the Crucible. Lyra makes her case for an alliance, but she is interrupted by Poseidon, who blames her for Isabel’s death and his lost chance to become King of the Gods. Hades saves her, but he’s angry and suspicious of her choice of allies. When Cerberus appears to bring Hades back to the Underworld, Lyra befriends the three-headed dog, and when they leave, she finds the altar Hades made for Persephone. Lyra is called to the next Labor, wherein Hermes asks the champions to solve a riddle on the edge of a mountainside. By helping Zai solve the riddle, Lyra manages to make it safely down the cliff, garnering herself a staunch ally and a group of enemies among the champions led by Athena’s champion, Dex.

When Lyra and Zai meet to discuss strategy, Dex and his allies intimidate them to the extent that Lyra and Zai jump off the waterfall in Olympus. Though Zai is able to fly to safety, Lyra is dragged to the Underworld by the water. She encounters Cerberus and Charon, the ferryman of souls, who wants to test her loyalty to Hades. She succeeds, and she learns that Hades and Persephone were never married or in love. During Dionysus’s jungle Labor, Dex calls for the champions to come together and incapacitate Lyra because no one wants Hades to win. Lyra manages to stop his plans and gain temporary allies by offering her tip about Aphrodite’s Labor. While trying to overcome the Labor, Lyra is forced to use one of her pomegranate seeds to save Meike, one of the champions, for which Hades gets in trouble, as it appears Lyra has more relics than other champions. The next two Labors begin, as Apollo and Artemis coordinate their Labors. Lyra wins her first Labor—Apollo’s—by unintentionally creating music in a sealed room with a monster. Instead of taking advantage of her win, however, she offers information on how to complete the Labor to the other champions on the condition that no one fights. They accept, but during Artemis’s Labor, Lyra is wounded by dragon fire. As a winner of one Labor, however, she receives treatment from Asclepius, god of healing, but she witnesses a concerned Hades, which she feels is impossible because of her curse.

Later, Lyra watches as a couple who claims to be her parents enjoys the spotlight and lies about her volunteering to take on their debt at the Order of Thieves. Lyra was trafficked at the age of three. During Aphrodite’s Labor, Lyra must find the person she loves most and confess. She’s unsurprised to find Boone. Together, they escape the dreamscape, and while Boone doesn’t return her feelings, he does ask to become her friend—something Lyra thought impossible. After a nightly excursion, Boone entices Lyra to use his recently acquired Helm of Darkness and explore Olympus together. They find a gods’ meeting in Hephaestus’s home and are discovered by Hades. When they return, Hades is furious and jealously kisses Lyra in front of Boone, which disgusts Lyra. Lyra is called to the next Labor and as a bonus from Aphrodite’s Labor, Boone can assist her. Their task is to face a tower full of Hephaestus’s automatons, but Boone convinces Lyra to scale the outside walls of the tower instead to save time. Though she agrees, the automaton catches them off-guard and attacks them through the windows, sending Boone falling to his death.

Guilt-ridden and grieving Boone’s death, Lyra grows delirious from her infected wound. Hades saves her by giving some of his blood and using the River Styx’s water. When she wakes, Lyra finds that she’s missed several Labors, and another champion has died. Though the odds of winning are slim, Lyra resolves to fight through. During Athena’s Labor, however, Lyra gets in an altercation with the goddess, and both Meike and Dex die. After a night of passion with Hades and a morning full of indifference, Lyra walks around Hera’s observatory, where she learns from Cerberus and Charon that Persephone is still alive and trapped in Tartarus. Hades, she learns, is participating in the Crucible to save her, and Lyra believes she is only a tool for Hades. In the final Labor, Lyra and the others face off against mythical monsters, including sirens, and she realizes that Hades knew about the sirens and chose Lyra because she was cursed to be unlovable and thus unaffected by the sirens’ song. Instead of leaving the other champions to die, Lyra saves them all with her remaining pomegranate seeds. Out of gratitude for saving their lives, the champions allow her to claim victory in the Labor—only for Zeus to charm Cerberus into attacking her and then wounding her with lightning. Hades defeats Zeus, but Lyra dies. Hades sacrifices his godly essence and role as King of the Underworld to resurrect her. They share their honest feelings for one another, and during the victory ceremony, Lyra is crowned the winner of the Crucible, and Hades the new King of the Gods. Immediately, he makes Boone a god, as promised, and collects Pandora’s Box to open the gate to Tartarus. When the door opens, however, the Titan Cronos, father of the Olympian gods, uses his powers to freeze time and bring Lyra and Boone across the threshold, sealing the gate behind them.