Could you forgive the Goddess who drowned your mother, if forgiving her made you immortal?

[DC Belton]

 

The Gods Among Us is about a fifteen year old slave who lives in on a world dominated by mythological Gods. A moody teen, Pallas doesn’t believe in the Gods except to blame them for drowning her mother. But she’s forced to shelve her cynicism when she accidentally rescues an obnoxious cat.

 

The story employs several tricks. The most obvious is that the “Gods” aren’t Gods at all. The reader enjoys this delicious secret, rooting for a heroine who is badly misinformed of her true surroundings. Scores of Easter Eggs…hidden references about history and mythology…are hidden throughout the work, letting the reader in on several jokes the heroine is never aware of. The writing is poetic with a smooth literary style.

 

Pallas is a cross between the valiant yet socially inept Ayla of Clan of the Cave Bear and the shrewdly resourceful Katniss of The Hunger Games. Pallas is smart, yet ignorant: brave, yet unsure. She makes bold decisions about difficult dilemmas…choices she’s forced to live with. But most of all, she’s an emotional heroine whose plagued with the pain of losing her mother.

 

Her story is really about two things…literacy and female empowerment.

 

Pallas is hunted by a jealous God. The only way she can foil that God is to harness his technology against him. To do that, she must educate herself by learning how to read.

 

The Gods Among Us is also about female empowerment, about the difficult choices girls have to make. Not only does she have to battle a malicious God, she also has to deal with a stunningly beautiful princess. Throughout her journey, she learns to respect and honor her female choices, finding her sense of self in her dangerous adventure.

 

The Gods Among Us is technically science fiction because it happens in the future. But because the uneducated teen believes in the “magic” of the Gods, the book feels like the very first fantasy novel…Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.

D. C. Belton creates an emotional world as elegant as it is deadly: where mortals fall prey to passionate gods and a slave proves stronger than craven nobility.

 

Visit Pallas at dcbelton.com