Serpent's Shadow

Hercules #2

by Timothy Boggs

Hercules and his comrade-in-arms, Iolaus, battle the deadly sea monster who has been terrorizing the local villagers, while Hercules' old enemy waits in the monster's shadow to achieve his ultimate revenge. Original. TV tie-in.

Genres: Fantasy, Tv, Mythology

214 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1996

Reviews

[Dimitris Papastergiou · Rating 1 out of 5]

Well, I didn't expect it to be a miracle of work.. but I wanted to get some entertainment out of it, which I did not. Oh well..

[Scott Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is better than the first book in this series. Boggs has clearly seen more episodes of the TV series by this point which has greatly improved his characterization of Hercules. This book also includes Iolaus who was missed in the first book. I enjoyed the early scenes with Hercules' mother, Alcmene, even though Boggs uses an alternate spelling of her name (Alcmena).

This book contained a lot of action scenes and, for me, Boggs doesn't provide enough detail in these for the reader to really get a clear picture of the events. There's some geography missing that sometimes makes it unclear exactly who is where.

This would have to take place after the second season episode "The Apple". It marks the first appearance in the franchise of Poseidon, ahead of his appearances on Xena: Warrior Princess (except for his inclusion in the main titles of that show). Boggs does a good job with Poseidon. It's not quite where the show writers take the character but it's enjoyable.

[Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

This story is more engaging than By the Sword, but being a Grant novel, it does take a while to get to that point. I'm still not sure I'd recommend this series to a Grant fan, since while the narrative style is familiar, the rest of it doesn't really compare.

I hear Grant also wrote romance and/or erotica under another pseudonym. That fact raises so many questions with me....