Titans

Titans #1

by Kate O'Hearn

Lima belas tahun lalu, Olympus dihancurkan dan para Olympian dimukimkan kembali di Titus. Sejak saat itu, Bumi dinyatakan sebagai tempat pengasingan. Baik Titan maupun Olympian tidak diizinkan masuk, dan dalam keadaan apa pun, manusia tidak diizinkan di Titus. Keduanya menjaga kerukunan, meski masih ada ketidakpercayaan. Jadi jika manusia muncul di Titus, api peperangan bisa memercik kembali. Pada hari pertama sekolah, Astraea dan Zephyr dihukum untuk memanen nektar di kebun karena berkelahi dengan centaur. Di sana, mereka benar-benar bertemu dengan manusia, Jake. Meski kemunculannya masih misterius, Astraea membawa Jake pulang sebelum ditemukan oleh orang lain. Namun, ketiganya menyadari sesuatu bahwa kemunculan Jake merupakan skema penaklukan. Lalu bisakah Astraea, Zephyr, dan Jake menghentikan ini semua. Atau apakah Titus akan dikutuk seperti Olympus.

Genres: Fantasy, Mythology, Middle Grade, Animals, Greek Mythology, Young Adult, Mystery

441 pages, Paperback

First published July 9, 2019

About the author

Kate O'Hearn was born in Toronto Canada, but raised in the heart of New York City and has lived in many places throughout her life. These days, she calls the south coast of England home. She has 3 brothers, no sisters and is passionate about animals and their causes and has many animal friends. (Pets)

Over the course of her life she has had several careers before finding her real love, writing children's books. Being the only girl in family of boys, she grew up a true tom-boy and always loved books with high adventure. But one of the problems she discovered was a lack of female leads in these adventure books.

When she started to write, Kate decided to address this imbalance and now writes high fantasy adventures with strong, compassionate and adventure loving girl heroes. There are plenty of boys in the story to keep it interesting and challenging, but she believes that a girl hero can be as brave, strong and adventurous as a boy.

She insists that adventures are for everyone!

So come and enjoy a few adventures with her...

Reviews

[Jenny · Rating 3 out of 5]

I received a copy of this book from the publisher through Netgalley, in exchange for an honest review.

3 ⭐️

Although it fails to say so in the blurb (and literally anywhere in the presentation of the book), this is a spin-off sequel to O'Hearn's Pegasus series. Readers of the Pegasus books will find their beloved characters returning, along with new ones. As for those who haven't read Kate O'Hearn's other books, they will struggle with a cruel lack of world-building and might very well be confused by the different species mixed up together.

Let me say this, O'Hearn is no Rick Riordan. I did not want to compare the two, but it became all too obvious to me that O'Hearn tried to integrate as many figures from Greek and Roman mythology (without any kind of discernment between the two) in one novel. I don't know if she was trying to win a bet, but it was too much. I got lost in the mashup of mythological figures. And, at the front of it all, you have Zephyr whose specie us never identified.

Zephyr is one of the two character that really got on my nerves in this book. It's not her own fault, but the author, who made her angry all the time at being called a winged-horse without ever giving out another way to call her specie. There's also the fact that 30% of the book seems to be spent with Astraea repeating what Zephyr said to Jake. It gets old real fast. A Middle Grade-level book does not need to dumb stuff down. There could have been a number of ways to say that Astraea translated things back to Jake without writing it word for word.

The other character that bothered me was Cylus. There is absolutely no hint of character growth with him. He's a bully and O'Hearn makes it sound like it's because he is a centaur, which is a dangerous way to categorize someone. The bully thing is also used to blame victims of bullying when Jake remembers how he was never bullied at school "because he never caused trouble for anyone". It makes bullying sounds like the result of a kid causing trouble for a bully, when it's generally unprovoked when it happens.

The story itself isn't bad, but I can't warm up to O'Hearn's writing. I believe those who already enjoy her books will like this one just as much. But if you're looking to start with her novels, better look back to the Pegasus series, so you will at least get some world-building (I assume).

[Infinity's Bookshelf · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to #NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me to read a early copy of this book. I have not read any of Kate O'Hearn's other series but this book seems to be a sequel series. There almost no world-building at all. We are just dropped into a world without any basic information about it. Other characters are treated like they are already known.

Beyond that I didn't care for the writing style, as it felt like an adult was trying to sound like a child for most of this middle-grade book. Any child reading this book will recognize this as an adult speaking. Overused words include: dude, seriously, and man. It was totally radical! Not! This 14 year old spoke like someone from the 70's.

The ending was the final nail in the coffin for me. I was enjoying the build up to the climax of the book. I have to say that the plot of the book was solid all the way through. I enjoyed that aspect of the story as well as the mythology aspect. My only comment would be that I think that she may have ran out of ideas about new characters from mythology due to the mix of alien character into the mythological characters, probably made worse due to the lack of world-building. Back to the ending. It was building and building and it got more and more interesting, until it just ended. The book ended with what felt like the rising action, no final battle, no final stand, only a small conflict that lasted for a chapter than it ended with no satisfaction. ]

I was enjoying it, so I am going a little easy on my rating of it. I might be tempted in the future to pick up the sequel or the original series, because it was a fun little book to read, but I totally feel like it deserves the rating it gets.

3 stars

[Meghan · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was received as an ARC through Edelweiss and Simon and Schuster.

I am very familiar with Kate O'Hearn's series Pegasus and Valkyrie and they seem to be very popular amongst our JFiction collection. Titans took a new twist that was risky and adventurous and that is sure to leave readers wanting more especially the young readers. The plot, characters, and theme are very powerful and are sure to attract attention and curiosity with our young community. If readers loved the Pegasus series, they are sure to love Titans. We will definitely consider adding this title to our JFiction collection at our library. That is why we give this book 5 stars!

[Rafia]

In the begining it was hard to get into. I may have skipped the first few pages. After say the next ten pages it has started to get pretty interesting. The characters and plot was pretty good but some things were very dragged out. Its as if the author just wanted to make the book longer which is why she just kept on draaaaaaaggggggggiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnggggggggggg.

Which got a bit annoying. However it is pretty well done.

[Jaymie · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. Wow! I haven't enjoyed a mythology story this much in awhile. I did not read the whole Pegasus series, so I feel like there are some references in this that I didn't catch, but it didn't impact my understanding or enjoyment of the novel. I loved the story and the characters in this. Major cliffhanger at the end, and the teaser for book 2 promises lots of action and anxiety!

[Adri Dosi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kniha je doopravdy inspirovaná Percym Jacksonem. Je ideální pro dvanáctileté. Určitě se bude dětem líbit, ale také se líbit nemusí. Mně vadí komerčnost. Protože chce z toho vytěžit a vydělat na oblíbených hrdinech, mytologii, pegasech a dokonce tam narvali i Harryho Pottera. To bylo na můj vkus moc. Takže já proto za tři. Jo a opět je to první díl ze série.

[Tiffany · Rating 1 out of 5]

When I bought this book, I knew it was the first book in a series. However, while reading this book, I experienced the feeling where I was missing out on something. There were references being made to another series that the author wrote for and it was a chore for me to read.

I felt nothing for the characters because they weren't developed, but also because I feel that their stories continued on from where the author left off in her first series. I was irritated by the way the author expected me to know what was going on when I never read her Pegasus stories before.

Most of all, I was irritated by the tell and don't show thing that O'Hearn is guilty of. I felt that she was writing exclusively for the fans of her first book series, and that I was just some dumb idiot that had no idea what was going on because I never read her books before.

Now, it is perfectly okay for writers to revisit worlds that they have created when it comes to writing another series that is set in those worlds. However, you need to build up the world and not expect every reader to automatically understand what that world is. Especially if it is a new and separate series than the other books you have.

I was disappointed in this book. I expected it to be well written and a great distraction. However, it seems to have put me in a reading slump because of how boring and lacklustre the book was.

We are introduced to characters that I don't really care for. We have Astraea and her friend Zephyr, who despite not being the same or looking the same, read the same. Zephyr is a winged-horse, much like Pegasus, but she's fiery tempered and the only thing that seems to define her is her absolute hatred of being compared to Pegasus.

And I don't understand why O'Hearn felt the need to constantly remind us that Zephyr isn't a horse... she practically shoves it into our face every opportunity she gets. Either through dialogue or through the characters thinking it.

Astraea is one of the main protagonists of the book and is the heroine. Yet, I know nothing about her because she wasn't developed correctly. She sort of existed to push the story along, but there is absolutely nothing to her character and her personality. She is as flat and one dimensional as cardboard.

There were other characters introduced here. I do like Tryn. He's not exactly a human, but he's different from the Olympians and Titans that he feels out of place. However, Tryn is also one dimensional. There's absolutely nothing to his character.

Then we get to our human character: Jake. Jake is an interesting character in how absolutely flat and one dimensional he is. It's almost like the author slapped a random name into the book, attributed some dialogue to him, and forgot to develop him in the meantime. Now, I do like Jake's backstory. He's a human that was taken to Titus when something grabbed his sister. He's got to save his sister, but has to be kept hidden because he'd die at the hands of the Titans who don't like humans... for some reason.

Now, while reading this book, I was reminded of Percy Jackson... only a poorly thought out rendition of it. We have references to 'The Big Three' but I didn't care enough to really know their names. I think they were the Roman equivalents to the Greek Gods... we even have some of the similar character tropes attributed to each of the three.

One thing that I don't like with this book is how forced everything is. The relationships between the characters for example. They feel like they are actors that are forced to be in scenes that they don't want to be in. The characters' voices all read the same after awhile, and if it weren't for the names at the end of the dialogue tags, I didn't know who was speaking because they felt like they were the same character.

Also, there were times while reading this book that I felt it was a science fiction book. Normally, I stay as far away from that genre as I can possibly get due to my intense dislike for anything remotely related to science fiction (classic literature not applicable, of course). I don't like mythology being reinvented as alien races by those within the science fiction genre and generally one star these books or DNF them entirely.

I don't like rating books 1 star and giving reviews like this. However, the rating and review represents my experiences while reading this book. I may pick up the author's first book series and see what that is about. Maybe my experience with this book was directly affected by not picking up the first series, especially since this book felt like it was a continuation. From reading the synopsis of the first book in the Pegasus series, I know that Emily and Pegasus have their own story... but I am not in a rush to pick up any of those books anytime soon.

Sad that this book was a major let down for me. I expected a good story out of this, but everything from the lacklustre writing and undeveloped characters was just a huge disappointment.

[ElsaMakotoRenge · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was so excited to read Titans! I love the Pegasus series, so I was looking forward to this book.:)

If you have already read and enjoyed Kate O’Hearn’s Pegasus series, you will like this book. If not, stay away, stay far away. All of the world building from the six Pegasus books isn’t explained here, and many familiar characters (like Emily, Riza, Tornado Warning, etc) and previous events are mentioned with no explanation whatsoever. Now I liked that Titans wasn’t bogged down by explaining about the Xan and Xanadu, what happened to Titus and Olympus, etc as a Pegasus series fan, but if I jumped into this book without reading the previous series of books, I would not have enjoyed it.

I really hope Kate O’Hearn chooses to somehow involve Freya from the Valkyrie trilogy into this new spinoff series. I don’t think it would be out of place considering all the alien worlds and everything.

Favorite new character is definitely Nesso, the cute little alien snake.

5 stars if you have read Pegasus:)

I NEED THE NEXT BOOK

[Bia Bentes · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was amazing!
I didn't realize that it is a sequel to the Pegasus series until a couple of chapters into the book. I have read just the first one when I was younger and really enjoyed as well — same to her Valkyrie's series.
I can say now that this author has something so heart warming in her writing, she's also extremely educative and funny through the story. I am a little bit picky to books about Ancient Greek beliefs because I am obsessed by it — my favorite series ever is Percy Jackson so you already can tell — and at first I wasn't sure about mixing the Roman personification of the Gods instead of the Greek ones but at the end it did not matter to me.
I loved it so much and highly recommend for those how love middle grade fantasy books 💕

[Jill Jemmett · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is an exciting start to a new series. It takes place after Kate O’Hearn’s series Pegasus. Some of the same characters are mentioned but it has a different storyline.

Titus is a planet filled with Titans and Olympians. They are the same familiar figures from Ancient Greece. I love stories about Ancient Greece, so I was excited to read this book.

The mix of ancient characters with space travel was interesting. It was a combination of ancient figures with futuristic abilities such as traveling to different planets.

I loved this adventure story. I’ll have to check out Kate O’Hearn’s other series next!

Thank you Simon and Schuster Canada for providing a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[Lemon Loaf · Rating 1 out of 5]

I opened the book. I read the first chapter. I slowly put it back down.

[Tiah Varner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very good! This book is amazing, although, not as good as Kate's Pegasus series, but very close! 8/10

[Stephanie Bange · Rating 3 out of 5]

REVIEWED October 1, 2019
Rating: Additional Selection
Recommended Grade Levels: 3-8

Astraea and her best friend, a winged-horse named Zephyr, enlist a group of classmates to stop an invading race of monsters who are assuming the identities of adult leaders in order to conquer their planet as they make their way on to others. Though never explicitly revealed in the book, Titans is a spin-off of O'Hearn's Pegasus series, as it includes Pegasus and Emily Jacobs just at the beginning of their transition. It finishes with a big cliffhanger, setting up the next book in the series. The main characters are the teenaged children of Olympians and Titans. It is problematic for readers that O'Hearn mixes up Roman and Greek names into a morass that confuses relationships between the characters, their parents, and classmates. For example, Hyperion (a Greek Titan) is the father of Aurora (a Roman goddess) and grandfather of Astraea (a Greek goddess). Other gods in the mash include Jupiter and his wife Juno (Roman gods), Arcadia's principal Themis (a Greek goddess, also known as the Oracle of Delphi), and Vulcan (a Roman god). A listing of characters and their relationships at the beginning would have been helpful. Character development is shallow or lacking; for instance, the centaurs remain bullies and Zephyr remains angry. Inclusion of original and translated conversations between Astraea and Jake, an Earthling, makes for tedious reading. Fans of the Pegasus series will probably enjoy this spin-off, but for others not familiar with the series, this may come across as a mess. Those readers might gravitate to something more well-researched and well-written, such as a Rick Riordan mythology title.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has several themes that stand out: 1) The main mystery of the story, (2) the strong friendships between the characters, (3) the way the characters personalities and skills complement each other, (4) the funniness and creativity of Zephyr, and (5) lastly the theme of transformation.

In regard to the last one, by transformation I mean the ability of characters and even a group people to change for the better over time, both due to their internal striving as well as the influence of those around them. Two examples of this would be the Titans and Olympians adopting education and learning to live and work together, as well as watching how some of our main characters start as enemies but over time become friends or at least allies.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is billed as the first in a series, but apparently is a spin-off of the authors' Pegasus series. Does it matter? Somewhat - there's background and world building that would have helped. If you know Greek mythology then some of the characters make sense, but the whole "Titans v. Olympians" thing isn't as clear thanks to mixing Roman and Greek gods (eg., the titans were Greek, but Jupiter was not one nor was he Greek). Definitely for fans of the earlier series, but perhaps not for those who haven't read it.

ARC provided by publisher.

[Viyana · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is about a boy named Jake who is kidnapped and taken to a world called Titus. In Titus, and invasion is happening. Creatures called Mimics are slowly replacing everybody and trapping the victims in Tartarus, the 'prison of all prisons'. With the help of a snake named Nesso, a winged Titan named Astraea, a half-Rhean half-human named Tryn, a winged horse named Zephyr, and a herd of young centaurs, they join forces to free everyone from the prison and reclaim Titus.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was a little lost because while it’s the first book in a series, it’s a continuation/side story from another of her series, Pegasus. So some of the back plot was missed because I haven’t read them. Otherwise, it was good and entertaining. My only “issue” is that some of the characters spoke unkindly to each other, saying shut up and such. But same characters are also heroic and shone in a kind light? I’d still recommend it to any middle grader and up!

[Engel Dreizehn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Arc Copy...I admit it was kind of difficult coming "late to the party" but I know enough about Greek mythology to know Titans and Olympians DO NOT get along well so this dynamic was going to be interesting to watch among the students + centaurs are really that...potentially painful to get along with.

[Ham · Rating 2 out of 5]

Says it’s the first in the series but it info dumps so much and is obviously a continuation of another story. Can’t stand coming in at the middle and trying to figure out who is who. Interesting premise, but the prose was amateurish and it took too long to get going. I made it almost to the end of the first part (of 7) before I gave up.

[Charlotte S · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this for a book club and loved it so much! My favorite characters are Jake and Zephyr because of their funny bond with each other. This is a great series if you love mythology and I highly recommend it, even if you aren't interested in that sort of thing. This is a three-book series and I've read all of them! Follow @bronteandwilder on Instagram for more fun book recommendations!

[AetherDragons · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am so happy O’Hare is back with another awesome Greek Mythology book series!! And I am not disappointed with this one! I love that we’re with all new characters, yet still love that we have a girl and a pegasus 😂 I am SOOOOO in and can’t wait for the next one!!!

[Avery Nelson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was easy quick read, and I loved how it connected to the original Pegasus story. I find it suprising that we don’t get to see much of the original Emily and Pegasus, still an amazing read and a captivating story.

[Miranda.S · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome book! Can't wait for more!

[Corinne Fowler · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really liked the book. I love that it's a spin-off of the original "Pegasus" series. I especially like the new characters.

[Rara Zevana · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really like very cute

[Kaylee · Rating 2 out of 5]

My middle schooler loved it. It was fine, but implausible plot elements (like being able to walk into a jail so easily) made it kinda meh for me.

[FantasyBookWorm · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kate O’Hern does it again with her amazing writing magic! This book will keep young readers up all night! Just like it did for me!

[kensey c · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn’t like it nearly as much as Pegasus, I felt this book dragged out the inevitable end of the series. But it was still pretty good :)

[Samantha · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a continuation of the Pegasus series. My dd has enjoyed reading it.

[Ananiah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love Kate O’hearn’s books