Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold is a book by Stephen Fry. It is Fry's retelling of Greek mythology; also see that page for more characters and storylines.
It all begins with the Titans, the first generation of divine creatures. Eventually these are succeeded by the twelve Olympians, living under Zeus' rule on Mount Olympos. After some aeons, Zeus creates humankind as a pet project out of boredom. That's when the fun really begins, because the intermingling of Gods and humans brings even more drama.
Given the source material, of course expect loads and loads of sex, rape, violence, torture and mutilation. Fry manages to tell it with some humour though, making it a lighter story.
This book mostly tells the stories of Gods and humans. It got 2 sequels: HeroesTheGreekMythsReimaniged, which focuses more on human heroes, and TroyOurGreatestStoryRetold, dedicated to the Trojan war.
Not to be confused with Mythos Academy or The Never Mythos.
This book contains examples of:
- 13 Is Unlucky: There are twelve Gods on Mount Olympos. At a certain points Zeus gets (yet another extra-marital) son who'd like to join them, and the Gods (sans Hera) would love him to join, but since thirteen is unlucky, they hesitate. Then, Hestia (the Goddess of Hearth and Home) decides she'd rather leave for Earth than stay on Olympos longer, which solves the problem.
- A Form You Are Comfortable With: When the Gods present themselves to humans, they don't take on their real form they have on Mount Olympos, which is too much for a human to behold, but present in the form of a normal human. The one time one of the Gods, Ares, shows his true form, the human (his lover, who begged him for it herself) immediately dies.
- Berserk Button:
- Zeus is a pretty volatile character overall, but the one thing that draws out his rage especially terribly, is when Prometheus gave fire to the humans against Zeus' very explicit forbidding of this.
- For Hera, it was Zeus' repeated cheating. Her rage was directed mostly on the women instead of Zeus, even though he frequently tricked them into sex.
- Depraved Bisexual: Though Zeus is married to a woman, and mostly cheats on her with women, he fancies men too. Many of the women are coerced or tricked into the sex with him, or just outright raped.
- Doorstopper: Downplayed with this single book, but if you include the two sequels, you're nearing 1300 pages...
- Fate Worse than Death:
- Prometheus is hung on a cliff by Zeus and his liver is eaten away by vultures daily. Because he is immortal, the liver grows back every day and he endures this for eternity.
- Sisyphus was forced to push a heavy rock up a cliff for eternity.
- Law of Inverse Fertility: Any time a heterosexual God-human couple has sex even just one time, the woman, to her suprise and usually horror, will immediately become pregnant and will deliver a baby exactly 9 months later. This is averted when the Gods have sex with each other—given their extremely long, immortal lives, they actually had few children.
- Mister Seahorse: After Zeus kills a woman pregnant by him, he cuts the baby out of her belly, makes a cut in his own thigh, and puts his son in there to carry it to term himself for the last 3 months.
- Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Zeus sometimes rapes women, which are so traumatised that they do not fare well after—they either become a Broken Bird, become raging to seek revenge, or commit suicide note
- Shapeshifting: Zeus' favourite form is an eagle, but he also often changes into a bull.
- Shout-Out: The book references Percy Jackson as son of Poseidon along with Theseus.
- World's Most Beautiful Woman: There were several women (not at the same time though) who are noted to be so drop dead gorgeous that every man who looks upon her, falls in love with her. The Gender Flipped version, where men are so beautiful that everybody falls and competes for them, seems to occur even more frequently.
