This is book 2 of the series. For our summary and review of book 1, The Games Gods Play, check out this link for our spoiler-free review or this link for our more in-depth review!
Book Stats:
- Format: ebook
- Chapters: 104, with 1 epilogue
- Pages: 671
- POV: 1st person, told from both Lyra’s and Hades’s POVs
Book Rating
Overall: ⭐⭐⭐⭐/5
Spice: 🌶️🌶️/5
Summary (No spoilers, as long as you’ve read book 1)
If you’d like to read the full summary and review with *spoilers included*, check out this post instead!
The Things Gods Break is the second book in the Crucible trilogy. It is a romantasy and a modern-day retelling of Greek mythology. In the first book, Lyra Keres was forced to compete in a deadly competition as Hades’s champion. The goal was to try to survive, of course, but also win Hades the title of King of the Gods. After winning (barely), Hades made Lyra Queen of the Underworld in order to save her.
Additionally, Boone takes over as the God of thieves and Hades uses his power as King of the Gods to demand Pandora’s Box, which he planned to use to save Persephone from Tartarus, the prison world that houses the titans. Unfortunately, the first book ends with Lyra and her best friend, Boone, getting pulled into Tartarus, trapped with violent and destructive beings.
This is where our journey starts in The Things Gods Break. Lyra and Boone were pulled into Tartarus by Cronos, king of the titans and Hades’s father. Right away, Lyra sees the door to leave Tartarus is closed and locked. She also notices that Persephone isn’t around, only Cronos. Persephone was meant to be waiting for Hades to pull her out.
Lyra is quickly thrust into yet another set of challenges she must try to survive. She learns that in order to seal in the titans, the gods created 7 locks that must be unsealed in order to leave Tartarus. The gods cannot unseal the locks themselves, so they rely on Lyra to do it.
This story includes time travel, which was fine at first but increasingly became more confusing and overwhelming as the story went on. I was able to follow along, but at times the story just felt a little too chaotic and messy. That’s the primary reason I’m giving 4 stars instead of 5. I loved the story and the characters, but things started to feel rushed, with too many points being thrown together messily. I did love that throughout this book, we got some chapters with Hades’s POV. That gave his character more depth and explained some of the situations that took place in book 1.
Based on our spice rating, I’ll give this 2 chili peppers. There was more than just fade-to-black and/or kissing scenes. Intimate scenes were minimal and only vaguely descriptive, but there were a couple.
Abigail Owen does a wonderful job of writing a romantasy that includes plenty of tension and strong characters. I enjoy the romance aspects of the book and I love that the main focus isn’t spice, but rather the plot and unraveling secrets. A scene near the end of the book was heartbreaking, but so well done. I definitely can’t wait for book 3 to come out!
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