Neon Gods, Book 1 about Hades and Persephone
''If you bleed all over my floors trying to escape, I'll be forced to track you down and haul you back here to clean them."
I blink. It's so close to what I was thinking that it's almost eerie. "You are the strangest man I've ever met."
Now it's his turn to give me a wary look. "What?"
"Exactly. What? What kind of threat is that? You're worried about your floors?"
"They're nice floors.''
Dark Olympus is an Adult Urban Fantasy series by Katee Robert based on Greek mythology.
- Neon Gods
- Electric Idol
- Wicked Beauty
- Radiant Sin
This series provides examples of:
- Abduction Is Love: Deconstructed. Hades and Persephone pretend Hades abducted Persephone. Persephone, because she wants to get out of an engagement to Zeus, and Hades to take revenge on Zeus for killing his parents. Naturally, they fall in love.
- Abusive Parents: Demeter abuses her four daughters to get ahead in Society. This commutates to promising Zeus her daughter Persephone in marriage, even though he has a habit of killing his wives once he grows bored with them.
- All Girls Want Bad Boys: Averted and played straight. Persephone doesn't want to marry Zeus, who is a Serial Killer, and is frightened of him. But she falls in love with Hades, who is a more traditional Bad Boy.
- Attention Whore: Demeter does everything to get attention, even pimping out her own daughters. Persephone mentions she was barely able to thwart off a nose job to look more presentable in the yellow press.
- Curves in All the Right Places: Psyche. She is so pretty, she gets into a feud with Aphrodite, which leads to Eros falling in love with her.
- Damsel in Distress: Persephone when she runs away from Zeus men and ultimately stumbles into the Undercity as a last effort to escape them.
- Defrosting Ice Queen: Hades is so far removed from Society that people outside the Undercity believe he is dead. He gets better with social interactions once Persephone comes in the picture.
- Everybody Hates Hades: Hades' nickname in Olympus is "The Boogieman." It goes so far that the Society pretends he is dead and a myth. The only friends he has are Dionysus and Hermes, who regularly raid his fridge then they are high.
- Everybody Loves Zeus: Averted. Everybody is wary of him at best, frightened at worst. Since he is the head of the 13, nobody who doesn't want to commit social suicide will let him know, though.
- Fake Relationship: Hades and Persephone fake being in a relationship after her fake abduction, since Zeus doesn't like "tarnished goods."
- Florence Nightingale Effect: Hades takes care of Persephone's feet after she runs through broken glass when she escaped from Zeus and prevents her from getting hypothermia. She notes how tender and caring he is and asks him to have sex with her the next morning.
- Heroic Lineage: In the world of Dark Olympus, the gods are houses and their names are titles. Hades and Zeus are the descendents of the original Hades and Zeus, just as most of the characters are related to their namesakes.
- Romantic Fake–Real Turn: Hades and Persephone have public sex to anger Zeus. This leads to them actually falling in love.
- Official Couple: In this series, we have Hades and Persephone, Eros and Psyche, Helena, Achilles and Patroclus, and Apollo and Cassandra.
- Shout-Out: Everything is a Shout-Out to Classical Mythology, starting with the premises of the stories.
- Persephone's safeword is "Pomegranate."
- Whole-Plot Reference: The stories of the books are based on the classics.
- Neon Gods follows the abduction of Persephone by Hades.
- Electric Idol follows the love story of Eros and Psyche.
- Wicked Beauty follows the war of Troy, with Helena as a price for Patroclus and Achilles.
- Radiant Sin follows the story of Cassandra and Apollo.
