I’m now about to start reading Hera’s Terrible Trap, the second book in the Hopeless Heroes series while blogging about it.
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| Getting ready to take out volume 2 from the box set of Hopeless Heroes by Stella Tarakson |
In the first
book, which I blogged about last week, Hera was set up as the enemy of the hero,
Tim, as an extension to her enmity for Hercules.
From looking at the cover of the book, Hera is looking set to continue to be put in the role, standard in classical receptions for children I think, of the bitter enemy of Hercules who is dedicated to persecuting him.
To be fair, there are classical precedents for this in ancient sources including Hesiod, where Hera is responsible for rearing several of the creatures whom Hercules comes up against.
The dedication of the book to the author’s mother, Helen, ‘a migrant who brought her mythology with her’ offers a perspective who it is who ‘owns’ classical mythology which raises some big questions.
The book opens in a garden centre with what it’s like to be a child taken to a garden centre reminds me of own memories of being taking to them. Here, described from the perspective of Tim, the place is full of adults exclaiming delightedly as they look at plants as though they’d never seen any before.
It is due to what happened in the first book, it turns out – nice exposition here – that Tim and his mother are in the garden centre as they need to buy new plants to replace those that Hercules blasted treating them like the (botanical – I loved that!) Hydra.
Tim has grown in confidence since the first book. When he meets the school bully – Leo, the name has to be significant… – at the garden centre he responds to being tripped up by tripping Leo up.
Oh yes on the depiction of Hera as the standard dedicated evil goddess one. She’s the ‘evil goddess’ on page 27 continuing how, at page 8, ever since Hercules had been born, ‘Hera had decided to hate and resent him’ – emphasis added.
There has been some rushed exposition: how Hermes came into the story as the helper of Hera out of fear for her is rehearsed. But now we are I think into the plot of the new adventure when, after Tim returns home to find Hermes flying off in his winged sandals with the ancient Greek vase that Hera desperately wants back, Tim grabs the vase and is transported away holding onto it (p. 30).
He is transported, it turns out, to Hera’s sanctuary in ancient Greece. Preceded by a flock of peacocks – introducing for the readers quite nicely Hera’s sacred birds – Hera appears, asks Tim his name, and reveals – this is great! – that, echoing the meaning of name of Hercules and its connection with Hera (though this isn’t stated here), the name Timothy means ‘Honouring God’ (40).
Tim runs away from Hera’s temple – so while in the first book Hercules was transplanted into the modern world, this time round Tim is going to be transplanted into the world of classical myth.
In what is a missed opportunity not to evoke this world of classical myth, Tim runs straight into Hercules who takes him to his home and his wife who is called Agatha – in this regard the author is making her own intervention I assume.
I’ve now met Hercules’ daughter, Zoe, and lacking the subtlety of the first book where Tim and his world are gradually evoked, here Hercules thinks girls should stay indoors while Zoe wonders whether, in the future, girls are able to leave home to have adventures. I’m anticipating similar presentism as the book continues.
I’m skimming a bit as this book lacks the subtlety and world-evocation of the first one.
Tim has just met Theseus, who has killed the Minotaur already but whose father is still alive. Theseus – in the role of a self-loving teenager, which is about right I guess - has come to meet Tim having heard on the ‘GGG’ (66) that he needed help.
I need to turn the page to find out what GGG is going to stand far. I’m going to guess ‘Greek gods something’. Ah – p. 70: ‘Greek God Grapevine’.
Zoe has revealed that this is how gods pass on messages to heroes.
As a take on magical properties of grapevines in ancient sources – as on vases where everyday people seem to have become transported into the realm of Dionysos – this is super.
There’s a nice twist on stories being narrated within stories as in Ovid’s Metamorphosis when Zoe, star struck, asks Theseus, to narrate how he killed the Minotaur and only snippets are given as Tim filters out his arrogant boasting.
But the rehearsal of the story serves to help Tim decide how to get the vase back as it reminds him of a computer game he used to enjoy playing which was set in a maze.
The three of them – Tim, Zoe and Theseus – go through a garden full of statues that lack the perfect bodies that Tim has become accustomed to seeing. Their faces look scared too, One statue is crying actual tears.
When Tim sees a woman in tattered clothes with snakes for hair coming towards them, Zoe warms him not to look at her, revealing that she is a gorgon. Thanks to the illustration by Nick Roberts on page 89, the reader is shown just what the gorgon looks like with big snaky locks of hair, slanted eyes (!) and large pointed teeth.
Zoe reveals that Hercules has told her about how his grandfather killed a gorgon, Medusa, but that she had failed to listen to how.
But it turns out that the relative, Perseus, Zoe’s great-grandfather, now lives in the gorgon’s garden and tends it contentedly.
I’m half way through and going to pause now.
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| Hera's Terrible Trap: half way through |
A heads up that it’s when I got as far (about a quarter way in) as Percy Jackson and his (again, two… this is interesting!) friends encountering Medusa that I stopped reading – due to how Medusa is treated.
Another heads-up: last week I was loving reading Show Us Who You Are by Elle McNicoll including for its evocations of the Medusa myth until the end with which I had several issues which made the whole experience unravel.
So I need to
take a pause before reading more about what will happen next in the garden.
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