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You are here: Home / Archives for myth

The Mermaid Call by Alex Cotter

July 25, 2022 By achuka Leave a Comment

Waterstones
Amazon
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From the author of The House on the Edge, an ACHUKA Book of the day in July 2021. This book uses the same cover illustrator.

A gripping story of myth and mystery about a legendary mermaid and her dark power. When the truth comes out, will it bring freedom or a terrible retribution? Vivien’s never going to win the Mermaid Crown and she knows it. Does she care? Who wants to be rewarded just for being pretty anyway? So she joins Alice on her quest to find the mermaid of the lake instead. But as the legend starts to unravel, it reveals an ugly truth. And leads the girls into terrible, watery danger… Cover illustrations by Kathrin Honesta.

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Filed Under: Fiction Tagged With: mermaids, mystery, myth

Lore by Alexandra Bracken

January 14, 2021 By achuka Leave a Comment

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Amazon
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“Bracken builds a rich world around a skeleton of ancient Greek mythology that is perfect to read on a dull weekend and sure to delight readers.” KIRKUS
“ambitious worldbuilding and breakneck pacing” PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
“a ferocious triumph” BOOKLIST

From the No.1 New York Times bestselling author of The Darkest Mindscomes a high-octane story of power, destiny and redemption. A lifetime ago, Lore Perseous left behind the brutal, opulent world of the Agon families – ancient Greek bloodlines that participate in a merciless game every seven years. A game that is about to begin again…

For centuries, Zeus has punished the gods with a game called the Agon, which turns them mortal for one week, and at the mercy of being hunted by those with godly ambitions. Only a handful of the original Greek gods remain, the rest replaced by the mortals who killed them and ascended. After her family’s sadistic murder by a rival bloodline, Lore escapes and vows to repay her parents’ sacrifice by doing one thing – surviving. For seven years, she has pushed back dark thoughts of revenge against the man responsible for their murder, a man by the name of Wrath who has attained unimaginable power. Except for one week, every seven years. A week that is fast approaching … When Lore comes home on the first night of the Agon to find Athena gravely wounded on her doorstep, the goddess offers her an alliance; they have a mutual enemy, after all. But as the world trembles under the force of Wrath – a god with the power to destroy all of humanity – will Lore’s decision to bind her fate with Athena’s come back to haunt her?

Filed Under: YA Tagged With: fantasy, Greek, legend, myth, mythology

Leo and the Gorgon’s Curse – Brownstone’s Mythical Collection 4 by Joe Todd-Stanton

October 26, 2020 By achuka Leave a Comment

ACHUKA Book of the Day 26 Oct 2020

This is the fourth title in the Brownstone’s Mythical Collection from Joe Todd-Stanton.

We love Joe’s illustration style and this picture storybook is splendidly presented and printed on Flying Eye’s trademark thick matte stroke-able paper. 

Buried amongst the treasures in Professor Brownstone’s vaults, lie a humble collection of books. Filled with legendary stories from his ancestors, they tell of fearless fighters and unlikely heroes. The tale of Leo, the Brownstone who became a Greek hero, shows us that sometimes not fighting is the bravest thing you can do.

See some other books illustrated by Joe:
Bear
A Mouse Called Julian (a previous ACHUKA Book of the Day)
Marcy And The Riddle of the Sphinx (another title in the Brownstone Mythical Collection

Waterstones
Amazon

 

Filed Under: BookOfTheDay, Illustrated Tagged With: Greeks, legend, myth

A Lover Of Myth

November 27, 2017 By achuka Leave a Comment

The author and classicist Philip Womack is currently crowdfunding (on Unbound) a children’s adventure novel, The Arrow of Apollo, whose main characters ar ether children of Orestes and Aeneas.

Certainly the promotional video has been very well made and Womack is a persuasive advocate for his own work.

Filed Under: Blog, Books Tagged With: classics, crowdfunding, myth, mythology

David Almond (In Guardian Review) On A Song for Ella Grey, Winner Of Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize

November 21, 2015 By achuka Leave a Comment

guardiansmallWhen I was a teenager, I used to go with my friends to the beaches of Bamburgh and Beadnell. We’d camp in the dunes, have parties on the beach. We’d swim in the icy sea, watch seals, terns, oystercatchers. We’d sit by blazing fires as the beams of lighthouses swept across us and the astonishing stars glittered above. We’d talk of love, death, football, Tamla Motown, Allen Ginsberg, God, ghosts, grief. We’d talk of where we’d go, what we’d do, how we hoped we’d live. We went back to our ordinary lives on Tyneside: school, exams, families, council houses. Not so different, perhaps, from the lives of the young people in my book. They live by the Tyne. They are sixth formers in a comprehensive. They love music and each other. They yearn for joy and freedom. They travel north and have parties on the beach. They try to turn Northumberland into Greece. They try to think that the sun is warm and the sea is not icy. They sing and dance with abandon. Orpheus appears among them one morning as the sun rises over the sea, and he begins to sing them into a new understanding of themselves. Eurydice is Ella Grey, a girl who is not even there when he first appears. She hears his voice through the mobile phone of her best friend, Claire. It is enough: she knows she has always known him and he has always known her. The ancient love is recreated and so it all begins again. Claire is the narrator. She is also in love with Ella Grey. She watches, recounts, tries to share her friend’s joy and calm her own fears. But she can do nothing to stem the trajectory of the ancient, lovely, terrible tale.

Whole piece via David Almond: Orpheus helped me write A Song for Ella Grey | Books | The Guardian.

Filed Under: Blog, Books Tagged With: Greek, love, myth, teenage, YA, yearning

How About: Dance of the Dark Heart by Julie Hearn

December 17, 2014 By achuka Leave a Comment

danceofthedarkheart

This historical tale has a magnficently wintry opening:

The snow had come early, blanketing the land on All Souls’ Eve and re-covering it at regular intervals, up to and beyond the Solstice. Old Scratch had never known such a persistent piling up of the stuff. Day in, day out it came, with drifts touching what passed for his roof and no respite, not even on melt days, because the melting only went so far before the sky turned goose-grey again and down came another load, white upon white upon white.

When Tony Bradman reviewed this novel for The Guardian he said of it:

Julie Hearn writes with real skill, her style equally at home with the natural and supernatural, with rude mechanicals and over-reaching Tudor courtiers, with fairy-tale tropes and psychological realism. All the elements are familiar, but the final result is one of genuine originality.

Filed Under: Blog, Books, How About Tagged With: evil, good, historical, legend, love, myth, rural, Tudor, winter

Guardian Reivew

October 11, 2014 By achuka Leave a Comment

A Song for Ella Grey by David Almond, reviewed by Marcus Sedgwick

The true test of a retelling is that the story must rise out of its origins to become something worthwhile in its own right. Furthermore, Orpheus’s venture into the underworld is itself, like the even older story of Theseus in the Minotaur’s labyrinth, a version of what I believe to have been the very first story told round the fire: of Man entering the Dark Cave. The hunter enters the cave to rid it of a wolf, bear, or lion; the hero ventures to the darkest space to face whatever lies in wait, be it triumph or tragedy. Happily for Almond, and for us, A Song for Ella Grey is a triumph.

via A Song for Ella Grey by David Almond – a triumph | Books | The Guardian.

Filed Under: Blog, Books Tagged With: legend, myth, review, reviews

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