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 birthright: 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…

Okay, we need to talk about this book. It’s been in my Kindle library for about three weeks, and honestly, I didn’t know about the hype it’s had on TikTok until after I finished it.

Alexis is a character who would be dead in real life. As humans, we can withstand a lot, and there are instances where humans suffer and survive far more than they should. I would not make it past the first page of Alexis’s life. The level of pain and suffering she endures in the first few chapters made my head spin. Resilience doesn’t do her enough justice. She isn’t blind to her struggles; she accepts them, almost relishing them. She understands that the world is unjust, that she’s been dealt a rough hand, and she knows that her future won’t be plain sailing, but she continues along her path. Her early years are entirely focused on the welfare of her brother, Charlie. Focused at a level that is detrimental to her own health and well-being, but she never shirks away from her duty to protect him.

The Gods are among us, sort of. The Olympian Gods and the Chthonic Gods are alive and well. They once lived out in the open, but as the human race grew and evolved, they isolated themselves, hidden within the Dolomite Mountain range. Their powers are still far-reaching, and the human race is still enamoured by them. Titans roam free in the human world, making death a close frenemy.

During a test that would hopefully set Alexis and Charlie on a better path in life, Alexis gets whisked away to the Gods’ retreat and forced to participate in a battle (a massacre) and then survive an academy. What I appreciated about this book was that Alexis’s pain and suffering didn’t disappear the moment her circumstances changed. Her character didn’t change dramatically with the shift to her narrative. She takes all her trauma with her and refuses to break under the torture, starvation, and sleep deprivation. She doesn’t break under the taunts of bullies, the aggression from the professors, or the unnerving behaviour of the people around her.

She also has a healthy dose of sarcasm woven into her skin, which provides endless amusement while reading. A lot of the phrases I saved from the book came from Alexis’s inner amusing monologue.

The men in this book are dark. They aren’t the light, happy men. They aren’t even the mafia men or the hot working men. They are evil in every sense of the word. Morally grey but still intimidating. First, we meet Patro and Achilles. They are Alexis’s mentors while she attends the academy, and they have a lot riding on her survival. They are not kind to her. They believe, as many do in this book, that Alexis had led a pampered, spoiled life and that her failing in the academy is a result of not being able to ‘rough it’. As the reader, we have information they don’t and know this not to be true, which to me, further showed her determination to live despite all.

Patro and Achilles are worrisome to Alexis. She can’t get a fix on them. She avoids them if she can. She gets nervous and fearful in their presence. Achilles’s power is so great that he is muzzled. Literally. Patro is all aggression and anger, swearing left, right, and centre. Alexis watches them curiously, noticing how they interact with each other more softly but harshly when she is concerned.

She meets Kharon during one of the circuits. He stands in his boat upon the river. Never moving. She panics. She flails. She makes it her mission to avoid him at every turn, a mission he didn’t get the memo for. He stalks her possessively.

Finally, we have Augustus. Alexis’s professor. Heir to a Chthonic house. He is all aggression. He punishes her in class, he belittles her, he runs her ragged and then picks up the pieces. He runs hot and cold with her, and she never seems to know where she stands with him.

These four men are confusing to Alexis and, to an extent, the reader. It’s not just that they run hot and cold but that their characters are fluid and able to morph to the situation. They clearly know more than Alexis and the reader combined, but they never share that information; they just cryptically refer to it at strategic, confusing times. It was infuriating while reading because I wanted to know all the answers.

Alexis has limited interaction with the other Gods; at most, she interacts with Zeus the most, but even that is in a limited fashion. She discovers, as she continues to survive, that perhaps being so different is a blessing in disguise, as everyone around her continues to underestimate her ability and assume she will fail first and die later.

The possessiveness of the four men only increases as the book progresses, and worries Alexis, who is mostly an innocent woman. She doesn’t understand why they are so concerned about her welfare and why they threaten bodily harm when she puts herself at risk.

The ending is somewhat explosive, in my opinion, as cliffhangers go. Despite the title of the book, I wasn’t expecting the turn the book took or what was revealed. I was, I think, too invested in seeing Alexis survive that everything else became secondary. I do feel sorry for Alexis because, despite all she survived within the pages of this book, she was still exploited, still outmatched, and still left fumbling in the dark. There is a lot to be said about her character and far too much for me to write here – I’d be waffling for days! – but I was far more impressed by her than I was expecting to be, and I felt more connected to her character soul than I have to others recently.

The second book came out in October this year, and I already have it in my library. I am not sure if I have any concrete ideas on where the story is going to lead me. I haven’t fallen into any spoilers, so my canvas is completely blank going forward.

Oh, and as to the level of spice, it was minimal in this book. Much of the narrative was around Alexis adapting to the environment she found herself in, learning to survive, and promising herself to keep going. There was a small moment of smut, but nothing mind-blowing.