Grade: A-

Readers of this blog know I have no objectivity when it comes to P.C. Cast. NONE. I love that woman. I am a P.C. Cast fan girl. I will read anything she writes. What I like most about Cast’s books— and I do find very little of it in other romances— is the sisterhood, the coming together of women, the “hey girlfriend” stuff. In a lot of the romances I’ve been reading lately, the friends are always shoved to the background (or relegated to annoying “matchmaker” duties) once the girl meets the hero, but this particular book is really about two girlfriends growing together as people as well as finding their own true loves. That said, even though I enjoyed the hell out of this latest contribution to the Goddess Summoning series, there were some parts that made my eyes glaze over a little bit or roll to the back of my head. You see, there are two romances in this book and I just wasn’t that interested in the second one. Who wants to read about two incredibly gorgeous people falling in love? Give me the one about the guy with the gimp leg! Oh, and because one of the heroines of this story is the Goddess of Love, the deux ex machina gets a lot of mileage. Why wouldn’t it? The literal translation is “god from the machine”. Heh.

Warning: here there be spoilerz.

The Plot: Pea Chamberlain is in love with uber-sexy gorgeous omg-my-panties firefighter Griffin D’Angelo. Only Pea doesn’t think she’s the hotness and Griffin doesn’t ever seem to remember even though they have met several times. Pea is just not very good with men, period. Out of sheer desperation (and the fact that she needs to get laid very badly), Pea does a summoning spell in the restroom of a restaurant for the Goddess of Luuuuurve to help her out. Venus, who just happens to be hanging out with her friend Persephone in Tulsa, hears her and out of sheer unadulterated boredom and noblesse oblige, decides to help the poor creature. At first Pea doesn’t believe Venus is the real thing— as well she shouldn’t: the woman announced “I’ll help you!” in a restroom—but some wavy-hand magic tricks take care of that right quick. A couple of musical Girls-just-wanna-have-fun montages later (may I suggest Girls Just Wanna Have Fun or Wild Women Do?), homegirls are best friends… which makes things hella awkward when Venus finds herself in luuuuuuurve with Griffin the hella-hot fireman.

Meanwhile, in the WORLD OF THE GODS: The Fire God Vulcan (aka Hephaestus) is all mopey because no one lurves him and everyone makes fun of him because of his stupid gimpy leg (sexy!). He married Venus (aka Aphrodite) in the first place because she’s so social and he thought he could fit in better with the gods if he was the husband of the prom queen. Not that theirs was ever a real marriage; they’ve always been friends more than anything. So he’s all broody and employs his magic powers to spy on Venus and of late, Pea, making him all the more depressed because everyone else seems to be having fun except him. The more he watches Pea, the more he believes they’re kindred souls because she’s as awkward as he is, and starts falling in love with her, which makes him even more depressed because she probably won’t have him because of his stupid gimpy leg. He’s even contemplating giving up his existence and turning into a star (like up in the sky). This, of course, distresses Hera, his mother, because she doesn’t think Venus should be having SO MUCH FUN when her poor boy is miserable. Thus Hera devises a plan to teach Venus a lesson: she will bind Venus to the mortal world and to Pea until Pea finds true happiness and ecstasy.

The Heroine(s): Pea is your average “plain jane” heroine with a boring school administrator job and often pines for a healthy love life with plenty of sex. Thankfully, she only whines about it a little bit until Venus gets tired of it and straightens her ass out right quick (though I thought it was definitely cheating that Venus zaps her so that she will see herself as others see her). Venus, on the other hand, starts out as a flighty, easily bored goddess who’s just looking for some kicks, but turns out to have more layers to her than her human buddy. Imagine being the Goddess of Lurve, whose job it is to make people fall in love, and not have any love for yourself because you’ve been stuck in a loveless marriage for millions and millions of years. Her moments of vulnerability were surprisingly genuine and often enough she comes out more “human” than Pea, who is a more stereotypical romance heroine. I guess it would make sense, though, that Venus should be a more colorful, larger-than-life creature than Pea because she is a goddess. I just love reading about her being so flamboyant and melodramatic, especially because it is an attempt to disguise what she’s really feeling. Her theatrics are merely a shiny wrapping paper for what’s really inside her: a lonely, neglected wife who wishes someone would pay attention to her. Nevertheless, I love how the two of them just really mesh together, the way they commiserate with each other and laugh together. So sweet.

Still, if this were CSI, Venus would be the A-Plot and Pea would be the B-Plot.

The Hero(es): If Pea is your stereotypical romance heroine, then Griffin is definitely her male counterpart. Dude is gorgeous, kind to his sisters, kind to animals, kind to the community, but is a virile, virile man. He is a Ken doll. You pull a string on his back and he says things like:

1) “Don’t worry, fair maiden, I’ll save you!”
2) “Aw, babe, you’re making me so hard, my dick can crush a beer can”
3) “All I want is a woman I can spend the rest of my live with and have babies with”

…or something to that effect (he doesn’t actually say these things, but might as well have). He’s a mediocre category romance hero… and surprisingly drama-free. I wanted to know why Venus, the Goddess of Love, would fall in love with such a meh guy; sure, sure, he treats he like a “woman” and not a goddess, but what does that really mean? I guess I wish Griffin had been more… intense. I wanted to see why a goddess would deem him so worthy, she’d surrender everything for him. Thankfully, we are saved from the lackluster hero department by Vulcan, who easily takes care of the brood and growl quota that Griffin neglects quite miserably. Vulcan gets a little carried away with the “my leg! my leg!” thing, but oh, he’s so hot. What can I say, I love my men with hella-angst. When he decides to get all up on Pea’s grill and seduces her in the bathroom of all places, I just died. He also has a very, very, very hot *fanning self* self-love scene. Much like Venus, he’s a lot more interesting than his human counterpart.

…which makes me wish a little bit this whole thing had been about Venus and Vulcan (how cute would their embroidered matching towels be?) patching things up and falling in love with each other like never before.

The Secondary Characters: Aside from Hera— while fiendish, is surprisingly not the manipulative evil bitch we’ve read about in our literature classes— we don’t really see a lot of the other gods and goddesses. I would have liked to see the others taunting Vulcan or something for maximum angst. Or acting like the narcissistic, back-stabbing babies. We see some flashes of Zeus and Demeter hanging out in the background, discussing how to make ambrosia and crap, but that’s about it. The characters I could have used less of were Griffin’s sisters. They only show up a couple of times, but they’re as banal and boring as Griffin. Given more screen time, I think they could have mutated into those creepy matchmaking monsters who don’t seem to have lives of their own and never fail to piss me off.

O h My Word: I can’t even tell you guys how much I love the Goddess Summoning series because the one thing that PC Cast never fails to do is make me laugh. The scenes with Venus and her many, many shenanigans (don’t worry, they’re amusing shenanigans) as well as her tendency to curse in an archaic manner (”Oh Athena’s ever widening ass!”) made me giggle like a giddy thirteen year old girl. She writes with such verve, wit, and verisimilitude that even when she’s writing about a true goddess from Olympus coming down to Earth to hang out with a mere human from Oklahoma, I easily bought it. I loved, loved, loved, loved Venus. Also, I don’t know if it was on purpose or not, but the deities, Venus and Vulcan, were really written as more human than their actual human counterparts and Cast pulls this off quite well. Griffin and Pea pale in comparison to these two (though Pea was a lot more likable and relatable than Griffin). On the whole, this is more of an ensemble piece than a cut-and-dried romance novel and ninety percent of the time, it really worked for me. I really wish I hadn’t been so bored with the romance between Venus and Griffin… what’s the fun in two perfect, gorgeous people falling in love? I was more fascinated by the courtship of Vulcan and Pea and I really wished I saw more of it. I really liked the idea of these two misfits getting together (though I was really hoping it was Vulcan and Venus who were gonna hook up). Take The Breakfast Club, for example— if the Judd Nelson character had gotten together with the Ally Sheedy character and the Molly Ringwald character had hooked up with the Emilio Estevez character, it would be like this book except without the John Hughes heavy-handedness, but with a lot more sexin’ and references to boozin’ (PC Cast characters love the juice… people after my own heart). And if there had been an Anthony Michael Hall character in this book, I bet PC Cast would have hooked him up with a nice girl. ‘Cause that’s how she rolls. I’m just sayin’.

Love, Peace, and Snarkage,

P.S. Go buy this book now!

P.P.S. I cannot wait for the next book. GODDAMN IT.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 25th, 2007 at 12:07 pm and is filed under Books, Grade: A, Romance: Paranormal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.