REVIEW - Blood of Hercules (Villains of Lore #1) by Jasmine Mas

The Book

Release Date: 1 August 2024

Goodreads Link

⚔️Step into the Coliseum at the Spartan War Academy where monsters are made, immortality is won, and even a god can die…⚔️Alexis Hert isn’t a hero, and she certainly isn’t a god. All she’s ever been is a survivor.

But the Fates disagree.

When a blood test leads to her admittance at the Spartan War Academy, she’ll have to do more than merely survive.

Alexis will have to claim her immortality.

But immortality is a privilege, one earned in the crucible of the academy, where the heroes are villains and classrooms battlegrounds. While gladiators Achilles and Patro, her demanding mentors, hone her into a warrior, Augustus and Kharon, her professors and the brooding heirs to the underworld, haunt her steps and her thoughts.

Because where there are gods, there are bound to be monsters, and there is more than one hunting Alexis…

You might just come across these 

🏛️ War academy

😈 Villainous love interests

⚔️ Gods, gladiators, and warriors, oh my!

🦝 Adorable animal companions

🐍 Animal companions with a lot of ~opinions~

🔮 Prophecies

🌶️ Dark romance

🤷 Why choose?

💀Touch her and die

💍 Marriage law

☣️ Post-apocalyptic world

My Review    4 STARS

This book is certainly a different way to present the gods in an almost post apocalyptic world.

Alexis starts off living in a trailer with her foster parents and another child is brought to them when she is about 11.  It's a hard life full of pain and very little food. Things get worse when the mother dies and the father is arrested.  The brother then live behind the trailer park in a cardboard box and struggle to feed themselves for years.

When Alexis is nineteen she takes the Spartan test and is taken to the gods away from her brother, whilst there with the gods she is put through more pain, hunger and has to see a lot of her fellow classmates die.

Lots happens, there is internal monologue from our MMC and we sometimes get the book from other POV's, but it's mainly through the eyes of Alexis.

She is a strong character, stronger than she thinks, but she is fairly easily manipulated, especially as she does not know many of their laws or the way things are done.

The book doesn't;t end on a cliff hanger, but there are a lot of loose ends so you know there will be another book.

I look forward to seeing what happens next.