Review: The Helm of Darkness (War on the Gods #1)

'' 'When the world is taken back, and monsters rule the trees, blood of a demigod will spill. Two mortals will rise, two from the Before, reborn from sacrifice. And when the sky is black and green, and the heavens cry, they will lead a war. A war on the gods.' ''

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

From Goodreads:
Andy and Zoey are two normal teenagers living in the modern day—that is, until they’re knocked unconscious in a freak storm sweeping the United States.

When they wake up, the world they know has been tossed away. Their city is in ruins, strange creatures walk the earth, and worst of all, everyone is gone. They stumble across Diana and Spencer, two kids around their age who possess incredible magical abilities, and who claim to be the demigod children of Greek gods. Not only that, they also claim the year is 500 AS, five hundred years after the gods conjured a massive storm that destroyed most of humanity and helped them take the world as their own once again.

Andy and Zoey are soon handed an impossible task: To save humanity. To lead a war on the gods.

They’ll have to battle monsters, death, and their own inner demons to survive and to protect the people they love.

This middle-grade fantasy will begin by telling a story about the two most average mortals from the Before. The Before when the world was as we now know it, not the one where an apocalyptic storm killed almost entirely the population on earth. The Storm was caused by the Greek Gods, taking revenge on the humans who had forgotten all about the Greek Gods, causing them to fade away piece by piece.
Andy and Zoey are two average mortals. They didn't ever think the Greek Gods were real. They never anticipated that one day they might work together to save the world and humanity.

The book is relatively short, so there wasn't much space for character development. The two mortals had just about time to accept their fate as the prophecised saviours of the world before the book ended. Zoey is the more felixble one of the two. She accepts quite easily that this is her fate, but it feels like she doesn't truly comprehend it. She walks ina dream-like state, jsut going forward without actually mulling the situation over. Andy, on the other hand, is the one who doesn't want to believe. He is stuck in the past, his only motivation seems to be the will to bring his family somehow back from the dead and his secret crush on Zoey. He is the one who insists playing hero on every turn, and after a few times, it gets a bit annoying.

The plot moves forward quite quickly. There aren't any lulls, where the reader can breathe in peace, really. The book doesn't need those. I think that the pace set in the beginning is just right for the plot.

What really got me, was the past between the Demigods in the book. In the beginning, you get introduced to a few of them. Then when the plot progresses, more is revealed of the relationships between them. Especially, from the realtionship of Karter towards everyone else. Him being the son of Zeus himself. I would've wanted to see more of that, and more clashes between the Demigods, to actually find out where they stand in each others eyes. Hopefully, there will be more in the coming books.

Even though the book wasn't the most complex and time consuming one, lI found myself truly enjoying it. And if there will be more, I will continue on this series.