Discord's Apple - A Book Review

Discord's Apple

by

Carrie Vaughn

With the world, and certainly the United States falling apart under the horrendous pressure of war, cartoonist Evie Walker strives to keep the candle of hope lit with her Eagle Eye Commandos storyline, but it all falls apart when she learns that her father is sick. Using all of her fuel rations, she heads half way across the country to be by his side. But food and fuel rationing and checkpoints are not the only thing she finds in the near ghost town she calls home, nor is her grandparents' house, where her father has lived ever since he retired, what it seems.

I have always liked to toy with religion and magic, and obviously Carrie Vaughn does to. In this book, the Greek gods were really just people with really powerful magic. But just how did we get from there to here? And what really happened to the Greed gods? I love the chain of logic presented in this book, and Discord's apple was the core of it all.

according to Greek mythology, the goddess Discord inscribed "to the fairest" and tossed in the midst of the festivities at the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, thus sparking a vanity-fueled dispute between Hera, Athena and Aphrodite that eventually led to the Trojan War. What does this have to do with the story? Everything.

This review would be very long if I tried to tell you all the story threads woven through this book, and I can't tell one without telling all of them. I'll give you a hint though. What do you know of Hera? When I think of her, I picture a rather witchy person, vindictive and jealous, but by the end of this book, I kinda like her. Why? Oh man. you really need to read this book and find out.

As most of you know, most of my reviews head in a writerly direction at some point, but really this book is an example of the difference between traditional publishing and self publishing. The self published author needs to take great pains to learn the craft, and in my opinion, also run their work past a professional editor. The author who gets accepted by Tor Publishing is blessed with a team who makes sure their work is everything it can be. And this is one of those kinds of books. I am most pleasingly impressed.

I even went to Amazon and looked up her author page. I would say Carrie Vaughn is a successful author. I would be very surprised if she still had a day job.

Do read this book. You'll love it.