Positives. The concept for "Lore" is fantastic; the continued ever repeating cycle of rulers dethroned by subjects and houses that hold onto cruel traditions to have a shot at killing a god... But in practice, it was a bit of a mess. I liked some of the twists, such as spoiler 

Gill being revealed to be the original Hermes (even if his motivation for taking Lore and Miles in was very unclear and he should have been reinstated as a god for his actions).

Unfortunately, this novel was too ambitious, leaving a lot of plotholes to be filled. 

Negatives. In spite of the intriguing worldbuilding, New York feels empty. If you're going to set your story in New York, write about New York! If your character has fallen in love with this city, make us fall in love with it too! 

Rather than telling a cohesive story, it felt like the characters went from side quest to side quest which made this (500+ pages!!) book loose its tension. Relevant information was also only brought up as soon as it was relevant for the plot which took away all the fun of trying to guess where the story would go next.  

A dark, grim re-imagining of Greek mythology which explored the brutal side of both the godly, immortal figures and the plain old humans with their burning ambition. The plot was intriguing; watching the characters unravel thread after thread and often ending up with more questions than answers. The full cast of characters were well-developed, though frustratingly bad decision makers (someone had to advance the plot, l suppose). The ending felt slightly rushed,

and a bit jarringly sunshine-and-rainbows compared to the previous fifty-odd chapters

.

I struggled with this book, mainly because of how long the set up and introduction to the world and cast takes. A lot of characters are not memorable and feel very bland. Lore was a cliche main character and the plot quite predictable.
If I weren't attached to some names and wanted to see if my predictions were correct I would have tropped the whole book.

Lore follows its titular character Melora as she is dragged back into a borderline magical world that she has spent her young adult life trying to escape. The story mostly follows her and a small group of friends as they try to figure out why people in that world are looking for Melora and eventually doing everything they can to save New York City from a threatening force. The story includes flashbacks to formative moments in her childhood when she was still involved in this world and training to be a god hunter.

There are several surprises and twists woven into the story and the modernization of and constant references to Greek Mythology is fun. Bracken artfully brings various ancient myths up in a way that always gives the reader a chance to figure out if they know the story before she gives the sparks notes version for anyone who can't quite remember the details. Characters are all strong-willed people who have values that they adhere to rigidly, which means that there isn't much in the way of character-building, but the plot moves quickly under the choices made by our leading characters.

I did find my interest in the story flagging toward the end of of the book. This could just be a result of me trying to finish the entire thing too quickly and it was just too much all at once, but the story leaps from one brutal killing or assault or attack to another and that gets exhausting.

Being who I am, I don't love that all of the main characters are shipped, but I wasn't surprised that Bracken made those choices.

I think I was also hoping for a book that was  more empowering - I don't find stories that are constantly fighting misogynistic structures and people to be that empowering because they lean so hard on the existence of misogyny on the first place.

I listened to the audio book, which I'm not sure if I would recommend. I liked the narrator, but I had trouble keeping track of all the different houses and weapons and whatnot.

Really enjoyed the start of the book. The story drew me in right away. However that draw didn’t stay. While the book always kept my attention while reading, I forgot about it when I put the book done. I didn’t need to know what happened to these characters. Still a solid, fun read. Kinda if about the last few chapters though.