I finally got around to reading Lore Olympus vol. 2 recently. I wrote about vol. 1 here - which I really liked; it's a cute retelling of Hades and Persephone in a modern-world version of Olympus with unique, charming art.

Unfortunately I didn't like vol. 2 nearly as much and I think I'm noping out at this point. I just really dislike some of the choices the author has made with the central pairing.

So vol. 1 committed to Hades/Persephone as a cute, sweet pairing where most of the conflict and obstacles came from other people. Which I'm fine with! In doing modern retellings of mythology you need to make decisions like that, and I was perfectly happy with the direction it went (actually, to be honest, at least from the perspective of reader enjoyment, I liked that better than if it had decided to go in a Your Faves Are Problematic direction). Obviously you can do that too, but the first book goes with a "this is our central pairing, you're going to root for them" vibe. Which, great!

Then vol. 2 backs off of that and starts having Hades in particular obsess on problematic elements of the relationship - which I need to emphasize genuinely hasn't been problematic in this retelling. He didn't abduct her or force himself on her, he's actually been a perfect gentleman; most of the issues thus far have come from other people assuming that he's done something which he hasn't.

No, what he completely freaks out about is the age gap, which is ... I just ... THEY'RE IMMORTAL GODS AND GODDESSES. It's true that they're in a version of Olympus that is a sort of pseudo modern world, so it's inherently anachronistic, and a lot of the character relationships are a bit different from the original myths anyway. But honestly, one of the things I really liked about the first volume is that the gods and goddesses approach the world with a cockeyed-left-of-ordinary sort of morality that feels relatively true to the original myths even through the modern filter. They're gods and demigods and weird creatures in Hades' realm; they're different. Having Hades back off the relationship because she's younger than he is feels entirely wrong for characters who don't worry about, for example, eating human flesh or spontaneous baby generation. As well as feeling uncomfortably modern, it doesn't make any sense anyway! She's going to live forever! If you want something to throw a conflict between the main pairing, the actual problematic elements of the myth are RIGHT THERE. And given the number of surrounding complications in , you honestly don't even need that in order to keep the story going for a while!

Anyway, vol. 2 takes a complete non-problem and hammers on it to the point where it actually starts to become a problem. I didn't care about her relative lack of experience and youth until the book spent half its page count TELLING ME AT LENGTH ABOUT IT.

On top of that, the pacing is glacial, and there's only so much introspective angsty monologuing that I can take. There were a few things I liked (Persephone's bonding with Cerberus continues to be adorable; the art and character designs are still super cute) but honestly, the frustration factor heavily outweighs the enjoyment that I'm getting from it at this point.