I am sure that these retellings of mythological stories about gods and goddesses have a big following but this one wasn’t really my cup of Ambrosia!

The book is about Aphrodite and her passionate relationships, mostly with other gods. She has a particularly flirtatious time with Mars the God of War, although she also has a thing for Hephaestus. Despite all of their powers, the gods are turned into a rather ill-fitting group of individuals, each with their own whims and behaviours.

Take Zeus for example. You never quite know where you are with him. He can be quite friendly and chatty one-day but the next he is chucking thunderbolts at people and whingeing about wars and mortals. He doesn’t really come across as all-powerful.

Maybe it was this human-like domesticity of Olympia which I found hard to handle. Everybody wanders in and out, gossips and argues, so it is all a bit like a TV soap opera!

It is obvious that the writer likes Mars. He is repetitively described as all gleaming muscles and sinews with leather fittings and a shiny breastplate. He wages war for the sake of it with minimal regard for either ethics or the body count but Aphrodite reveals the pussycat underneath, and – I don’t whether this is a ‘true’ Greek myth – but they have a rollicking and sexy time together.

With a few reservations, you could argue that the novel makes Greek and Roman mythology accessible to a raft of new leaders and by making gods and goddesses in some way more human, you can make them seem more like ‘us’. Clearly, that is a strength of this story but it still wasn’t really for me.