King of Defiance - Michele Amitrani - ★★★★

AUTHOR: Michele Amitrani

SERIES: Rebels of Olympus, #6

GENRE: Greek Myth Retelling

PUBLICATION DATE: November 16, 2021

RATING: 4 stars.

I am a huge fan of Michele Amitrani. And when you are a fan of a writer, sometimes you tend to have over-expectations from every single book of his/hers. This can lead to disappointment because no author in the world can hit the bull’s eye all the time. This book is a prime example of how expectations can ruin the experience. “King of Defiance” is by no means a bad book, but greedy me wanted more!

Almost everyone knows the story of King Sisyphus and his dreary task of rolling a huge boulder up a hill as an eternal punishment for having cheated death twice. This book tells us the story of this supposed trickster king directly from his perspective. You get to see the creative ways in which Sisyphus uses his brain against the egoistic gods, such as binding Thanatos with his own manacles, tricking Persephone into returning him back to the land of the living and so on. What makes Sisyphus stand out in Greek mythology is that he is probably the only one who uses his wits against the so-called eternals. He knows exactly how to use their mammoth egos against them. Most of the other humans relied only on physical strength to get them away from tricky situations, but not Sisyphus. The book also reveals the reason why Sisyphus is so antagonistic about the Olympians.

For most of the story, I was feeling a little disappointed. Not because the writing was shoddy – far from it! The story was faithful to the narrative of Sisyphus as I heard it. But if you have followed my reviews of this author's books, you know that my favourite part of his writing is when he gives me a different look at the known Greek legend, causing me to go “Whoa!” in excitement and wonderment. And that didn't seem to be happening. Until I reached the 95% mark. That's when the Amitrani twist made its appearance and dazzled me! So until 95%, the story, while still being interesting, repeated the story of Sisyphus mostly matching the version I already knew, and the last 5% delivered the zinger. That felt like too little, too late for me. (I know… expectations. Sigh!)

Overall, I may not have enjoyed this story as much as I did Amitrani’s other Greek retellings but that's entirely because he has spoilt me with his consistent high-quality narratives. Every single time, he provides me with plenty of fodder to think about and as that doesn’t happen to the same extent with this story, I feel a teeny bit let down.

I still have such high expectations of him. I am still a huge fan. And I am glad I received this little jolt of reality because it means that the next time, I will go in with more realistic requirements and enjoy his writing more.

Would I recommend this book? Of course, I would! But would I want this to be your first experience of this author’s magical pen? I don’t think so. This is one of his very good works but it is not his best.

I received a complimentary copy of this book from the author at my request and these are my honest thoughts about it.