Asterion by Alessa Thorn

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After finished Heart of Fire early Saturday morning, the final weekend of FaRoFeb, I checked my bingo boards to see what prompts I might be missing. There were only two, reverse harem and angels or gods. Being that I'm not into reverse harem, I went for angels or gods. I had a couple books in mind that I was thinking of, but then I remembered I recently came across The Court of the Underworld series by Alessa Thorn. It's a series of retellings of Greek myths in a dystopian kind of world where Hades and his court are back on earth (as well a few other gods that survived). The first book is Asterion, better known as the Minotaur.

As you can tell from my 5-star rating, I loved this book. It was so intriguing and while I've read a few Greek god retellings, they have mostly been about Hades and Persephone. This was my first minotaur retelling. In the what's modern day in this world, Asterion runs a club with a gladiator type fight ring underneath, as well as a labyrinth. Our heroine Ariadne is a trained assassin that was taken in as a young orphan and formed (quite horribly) into such. She's the current high priestess of the temple, the assassin home base. She gets a contract not through her boss Midas to kill Asterion. 

Upon their first meeting she instantly wishes she didn't have to kill him and they are drawn together. However, outside of being paid a ridiculous amount of money, she also receive the means to get out of Midas's control. Asterion also feels the same pull. She decides to seduce him to get close and kills him. Of course she hates it because instead of killing him during the act, she waits to finish the intimate moment to cherish. What she doesn't realize, is that he is actually the minotaur. As he lays dying, the magic that transforms his head dissipates and she sees his real face. She goes on the run, only to be even more stressed out being that Thanatos was able to bring his shade back to his body. 

The entire series are shorter books, but they don't feel like they need to be longer. As you'll see in my next few reviews, I binged the first 5 books of the series to round out my FaRoFeb reads. This one is gorey and very action filled, but there's also great humor thread throughout. Most of these are more insta-love feeling, but Alessa plays it off as a more fated mate feel. Plus there's also jokes about other gods falling in love easily with humans in the past (I mean, look at all the Greek mythology and demi-gods out there).

I honestly couldn't recommend these books more. If you are into retellings, or Greek mythology, or unique novella sized romance these are perfect. After finishing Asterion I immediately joined Alessa Thorn's newsletter and started following her on a goodreads and instagram. I do wish that these weren't just in eBook format because I'd love to own the physical copies. She has finished this series from what I've seen, but had mentioned on instagram that she wants to do a series for Egypt gods as well, specifically mentioning Anubis since he's mentioned in passing in a later book. Right now she's also released two books for a new fae series that I wish I would've seen earlier in February for FaRoFeb. I'm definitely going to be reading everything in her short backlist and can't wait to read more!

Have you read Asterion?

Bookishly Yours, 

Stasi🍎

STATISTICS: Asterion, Alessa Thorn, 5-stars, 0 days, eBook, 207 pages, published in 2020