So I saw Lifestyles of Gods and Monsters over on All The Books and Chocolate and immediately requested a copy. A book about an Ancient Greek reality show? That’s 100% for me!

In this novel, the Minoan royal family hosts a hugely popular annual reality show, The Labyrinth Contest, where fourteen Athenian teenagers compete to survive the maze and battle the minotaur. The winner will get fame and fortune, oh, wait, there hasn’t been a winner in ten years. Just lots of attractive young people going to their gristly and televised deaths.

All the major players are here, reinvented for reality show age. Daedalus is the eccentric,  not entirely trustworthy,  genius designer behind the labyrinth, most of the reality show, and a certain white-heifer contraption. His son, Icarus, is also caught up in the making of the reality show, although he dreams of flying away.  The queen of Minos is beautiful, polished, and camera-ready at all times, never mind how the Minotaur came to be…   Ariadne’s sisters’ reality show is mostly about wearing the best dresses to the best parties, with the occasional not-so-leaked sex tape.  Theseus’ shot, with Ariadne’s help, has a real change of defeating the Minotaur, which means a huge ratings boost for the show.

The world and concept are so great that I almost didn’t notice that he central couple was a bit flat. Ariadne was occasionally annoying, constantly moaning in a realistically teenage way about being the only one who can do it, and how she’s Not Like Other Girls because she wears a hoodie and doesn’t dress up. (At one point, older sister Acalle hints at a much darker world than their obedient camera smiles and outre fashions, but in true teenage fashion, Ariadne is too focused on herself to pursue this much further.)

Theseus’ main personality trait was Hot, which is pretty much how YA romance works and pretty much how he was in the myths. Heroic Theseus is handsome and ready to punch things. The two didn’t seem to have much spark or relationship beyond constantly saying how they couldn’t tear themselves away from each other. I guess when Eros points you at someone, you have no choice but to follow. (See previous re: Minos’ queen and the bull.)

Some of the plot points are a bit pointed, but since the classic Greek plays often have convenient information falling into convenient hands at convenient times, I’m more than ok with it. The thread, the maze, and the annual Athenian contestants are all wonderfully and appropriately updated for a reality-show world. 

A mild spoiler, if it even counts as a spoiler to reveal that women don’t always get good endings in the ancient myths: The end of Ariadne’s tale is the most reinvented part of this novel. The closing scene is a perfect update for an escaped reality show, an ex-princess, and a maturing, evolving teen girl.

This is post for this month’s Bookworm Monthly, over on At Home A Lot.