Book Review of Bonds of Hercules by Jasmine Mas: Somehow the Hercules Chaos Gets Even Bigger
After finishing Blood of Hercules, I apparently wasn’t finished with Alexis—or with the collection of dangerous, emotionally questionable immortals surrounding her.
So naturally I moved on to Bonds of Hercules.
This is book two in Jasmine Mas’s Villains of Lore series, and it continues directly from the first book, so do not start here unless you’re comfortable being very confused. The publisher describes Alexis as trapped in marriage to two enemies while dealing with Augustus, Kharon, Achilles, Patro, and a dangerous prisoner who has escaped from the Underworld.
And somehow that description undersells the chaos.
The relationships get much more complicated
The first book spends a lot of time introducing this strange world and establishing Alexis’s relationships with the men around her.
Bonds of Hercules gets to deal with the consequences.
And there are a lot of consequences.
The romance moves further forward, loyalties become increasingly difficult to understand, and Alexis has to figure out which people she can trust when practically everyone around her has their own agenda.
These men were morally gray before.
Apparently they took that as a challenge.
Alexis is still Alexis
Thankfully, Alexis hasn’t lost the sarcastic voice that made the first book entertaining.
No matter how enormous the stakes become, there’s something funny about watching her process increasingly absurd circumstances like this is simply another terrible inconvenience she has to survive.
She is powerful, but she’s also still trying to understand the world she’s been thrown into.
And the more she learns, the more complicated everything becomes.
More mythology, romance and insanity
If you loved the first book, the sequel gives you more of almost everything.
More mythology.
More danger.
More romance.
More possessiveness.
More questions.
More questionable behavior from extremely powerful men.
And a heroine who increasingly realizes that the story she’s been told about herself may not be the whole story.
Who should read Bonds of Hercules?
Read this if you finished Blood of Hercules and immediately needed answers.
Do not read this first.
This is very much a continuing story rather than a separate adventure, and much of what makes it fun comes from watching relationships and mysteries established in book one evolve.
Final thoughts
Reading both Hercules books in the same month was probably the best way to do it.
There was no chance to forget who betrayed whom, which immortal had which agenda, or exactly why everyone was currently angry with everyone else.
Bonds of Hercules takes the world established in Blood of Hercules and makes everything messier.
The relationships are messier.
The mythology is messier.
The danger is bigger.
And somehow Alexis’s life gets even more complicated.
If book one hooked you, book two isn’t going to calm anything down.
