{"id":9589,"date":"2018-06-11T21:30:08","date_gmt":"2018-06-12T03:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9589"},"modified":"2018-06-15T12:22:05","modified_gmt":"2018-06-15T18:22:05","slug":"quick-review-the-immortals-by-jordanna-max-brodsky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=9589","title":{"rendered":"Quick Review: THE IMMORTALS by Jordanna Max Brodsky"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The old gods live among us, moving unseen, taking new forms, their powers diminished as people no longer honor them. That was the premise of Neil Gaiman’s magical road-trip novel, American Gods<\/em>, and it is also the backstory to The Immortals<\/a> <\/em>(2016), for here the Olympic deities have abandoned Greece after the anti-Pagan emperor Theodosius I<\/a> made Christianity the official and legal religion of the empire.<\/p>\n

Pious followers of reconstructed Hellenic religion should avoid this book. I am not going to give away all\u00a0 the plot, but let’s just say that your screams of rage might alarm your neighbors.<\/p>\n

Think of it as Mary Stewart \u2014 romantic suspense thriller \u2014 meets Dan Brown \u2014 the action stops while Robert Langdon, professor of symbology, explains the secret meaning behind events \u2014 only in this case it is Theodore Schultz of the Columbia University classics department who stops the breakneck action to explain the secret mythic plans behind a series of crimes.<\/p>\n

Over time, some of the gods have gravitated to Manhattan, even Artemis the hunter, now a freelance private investigator and avenger of wrongs against women, currently using the name of Selene DiSilva. Hades lives under a disused subway station. Hermes (“Mr. Dash”) is now a film producer.<\/p>\n

Paired with Professor Schultz, Artemis seeks to stop a revival of the Mysteries that involves human sacrifice (please, no screams of outrage), one victim being his former lover. But the question is, will she, the chaste goddess, fall in love with him \u2014 and if so, will she have to kill him? And does she really need her divine status?<\/p>\n

The Immortals<\/em> is a\u00a0 page-turner, and definitely worthy of the label “Pagan-ish.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The old gods live among us, moving unseen, taking new forms, their powers diminished as people no longer honor them. That was the premise of Neil Gaiman’s magical road-trip novel, American Gods, and it is also the backstory to The Immortals (2016), for here the Olympic deities have abandoned Greece after the anti-Pagan emperor Theodosius […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[336,216,335,296],"class_list":["post-9589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-artemis","tag-literature","tag-new-york","tag-pagan-ish"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-2uF","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7386,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7386","url_meta":{"origin":9589,"position":0},"title":"A History of the Gods of Irish Myth","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"August 3, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Forthcoming from Princeton University Press, Ireland's Immortals: A History of the Gods of Irish Myth (2016), by Mark Williams. Think of the \"Finding a God\" and \"Finding a Goddess\" chapters of Ronald Hutton's Triumph of the Moon \u2014 but book-length, dealing with Irish material, and the product of numerous quests\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Ireland\"","block_context":{"text":"Ireland","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=ireland"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13427,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13427","url_meta":{"origin":9589,"position":1},"title":"Ronald Hutton’s Gresham Lectures Available Online","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 19, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"The five lectures that Ronald Hutton gave this past spring in the Gresham College series Finding Britain's Lost Gods are available for viewing online. Each lasts about an hour. Gods of Prehistoric Britain Paganism in Roman Britain Anglo-Saxon Pagan Gods Viking Pagan Gods in Britain Finding Lost Gods in Wales\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Britain\"","block_context":{"text":"Britain","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=britain"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/hutton-anglo-saxon-1024x582.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/hutton-anglo-saxon-1024x582.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/hutton-anglo-saxon-1024x582.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":10186,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10186","url_meta":{"origin":9589,"position":2},"title":"I Will Be Buying this Book on Polytheistic Theology","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 2, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"New from Bibliotheca Alexandrina: Ascendant: Modern Essays on Polytheism and Theology. From the publisher: Monotheistic assumptions so pervade our culture that even those few people born into polytheist religions (or those who grew up with no religion at all) cannot help but be influenced by them. Polytheology raises questions that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Pagan studies\"","block_context":{"text":"Pagan studies","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=pagan-studies"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8315,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=8315","url_meta":{"origin":9589,"position":3},"title":"“American Gods” as a Challenge to the Study of Religion","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 4, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I am still waiting to see American Gods on the screen; meanwhile, scholars of religion are turning to the book and upcoming TV series to see how they challenge conventional views of what \"religion\" is, particulary in the classroom. In the first of a series at the Bulletin for the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11015,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=11015","url_meta":{"origin":9589,"position":4},"title":"Pomegranate 21.1 Published\u2014Table of Contents","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 8, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"The Pomegranate: The International Journal of Pagan Studies Issue 21.1 (2019) table of contents Articles Fallen Soldiers and the Gods: Religious Considerations in the Retrieval and Burial of the War Dead in Classical Greece Sarah L. Veale Attitudes Towards Potential Harmful Magical Practices in Contemporary Paganism - A Survey Bethan\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/gallery.mailchimp.com\/7b079594af3b248f2afa52f65\/images\/54379418-5898-4683-9b1b-07cb2df1455e.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5788,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5788","url_meta":{"origin":9589,"position":5},"title":"New Book on Ukrainian Paganism","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"July 6, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"The Return of Ancestral Gods: Modern Ukrainian Paganism as an Alternative Vision for a Nation by Mariya Lesiv, who teaches in the Department of Folklore at\u00a0 the Memorial University of Newfoundland, has now been released by McGill-Queen's University Press in Canada. From the publisher's site: In The Return of Ancestral\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Europe\"","block_context":{"text":"Europe","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=europe"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.mqup.ca\/filebin\/images\/products\/main\/9780773542624.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9589"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9600,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9589\/revisions\/9600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}