What do you think?
Rate this book
Khthonios
Long before Aidoneus Zagreus Khthonios was the mighty ruler of the Underworld, he was the cast-aside offspring of the Devourer. Hades escapes his father's clutches and struggles to find his destiny, one that is far greater than his birthright.
323 pages, ebook
Published October 21, 2020
About the author
M.M. Kin
7 books115 followersM.M. Kin has been interested in history and mythology since she was young and has been an avid reader for as long as she can remember. As with many other readers (and authors) books were, and are still a refuge.
Her other interests include hiking, kayaking, and world domination. Her favorite genres are historical fiction and science fiction, but she also enjoys pretty much any genre of book!
So far, she has published five books - the Seeds trilogy, Worthy of Love, and Khthonios. She is currently at work on her sixth mythology book, Tapestry, as well as her first fantasy book, Moonshadows.
Future projects will include more of the above as well as science fiction and horror, and hopefully, a family saga. So much to do, so little time...
Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/M.M.-Kin/e/B00...
Smashwords - https://www.smashwords.com/profile/vi...
FB - https://www.facebook.com/mmkinauthor/
Tumblr - https://mmkin.tumblr.com/
Book review archive - https://www.librarything.com/profile/...
(As of Feb 2026, I have also opened a Storygraph, and am mirroring my reviews there one by one) https://app.thestorygraph.com/profile...
Her other interests include hiking, kayaking, and world domination. Her favorite genres are historical fiction and science fiction, but she also enjoys pretty much any genre of book!
So far, she has published five books - the Seeds trilogy, Worthy of Love, and Khthonios. She is currently at work on her sixth mythology book, Tapestry, as well as her first fantasy book, Moonshadows.
Future projects will include more of the above as well as science fiction and horror, and hopefully, a family saga. So much to do, so little time...
Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/M.M.-Kin/e/B00...
Smashwords - https://www.smashwords.com/profile/vi...
FB - https://www.facebook.com/mmkinauthor/
Tumblr - https://mmkin.tumblr.com/
Book review archive - https://www.librarything.com/profile/...
(As of Feb 2026, I have also opened a Storygraph, and am mirroring my reviews there one by one) https://app.thestorygraph.com/profile...
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
October 4, 2025
Never thought I’d be posting a review on my own book but here we go…
I published my first novel over a decade ago. Back then, the idea of AI writing a book was not new, but it seemed to be solidly in the realm of science fiction.
Alas. It’s now 2025 and AI is indeed writing books… albeit rather poorly. Many of these AI-created “books” have been showing up here on Goodreads and over at Amazon at an alarming rate. And unfortunately, many of these “authors” are not being open about this, trying to pass off their AI slop as a real book. Fortunately, at this point, AI slop is pretty easy to recognize if you’ve read a few samples of it, likewise with AI art.
Unfortunately, AI is improving. So there may come a day when an AI-written “book” becomes indistinguishable from a real book. Pray that day never comes. Pray hard. Pray like you’ve never prayed before… and the same goes for anything else created by AI. I’ve seen AI art that could be hard to discern unless you took a close look at it, or look at the “creator’s” portfolio.
With that in mind, I feel the need to make a definitive statement here. Obviously a novel written over a decade ago can’t be a product of AI, but I am still writing, and and have upcoming titles. I do not use AI in my writing, unless one counts Grammarly’s spell/grammar check as AI. I write my manuscripts in LibreOffice before I run it through Grammarly (free version – no generative software)
My book covers are the work of an artist I paid fairly. Before purchasing a book, make sure to check it closely so you’re not giving an “author” good money for AI slop. Support honest authors whose works are the product of their hard work, research, sweat, and imagination. And not just authors, but artists, musicians, etc etc.
The 2020s have been pretty rough so far, let's hope that the second half of this decade is better than the first, ha! Have a great day!
I published my first novel over a decade ago. Back then, the idea of AI writing a book was not new, but it seemed to be solidly in the realm of science fiction.
Alas. It’s now 2025 and AI is indeed writing books… albeit rather poorly. Many of these AI-created “books” have been showing up here on Goodreads and over at Amazon at an alarming rate. And unfortunately, many of these “authors” are not being open about this, trying to pass off their AI slop as a real book. Fortunately, at this point, AI slop is pretty easy to recognize if you’ve read a few samples of it, likewise with AI art.
Unfortunately, AI is improving. So there may come a day when an AI-written “book” becomes indistinguishable from a real book. Pray that day never comes. Pray hard. Pray like you’ve never prayed before… and the same goes for anything else created by AI. I’ve seen AI art that could be hard to discern unless you took a close look at it, or look at the “creator’s” portfolio.
With that in mind, I feel the need to make a definitive statement here. Obviously a novel written over a decade ago can’t be a product of AI, but I am still writing, and and have upcoming titles. I do not use AI in my writing, unless one counts Grammarly’s spell/grammar check as AI. I write my manuscripts in LibreOffice before I run it through Grammarly (free version – no generative software)
My book covers are the work of an artist I paid fairly. Before purchasing a book, make sure to check it closely so you’re not giving an “author” good money for AI slop. Support honest authors whose works are the product of their hard work, research, sweat, and imagination. And not just authors, but artists, musicians, etc etc.
The 2020s have been pretty rough so far, let's hope that the second half of this decade is better than the first, ha! Have a great day!
January 2, 2022
Khthonios is a retelling of ancient Greek myths from a more personal and creative point of view of the modern author. I was surprised to walk through Barnes and Noble and see a shelf-end display that was full of such re-tellings of myths. The style has become an entire genre unto itself.
Khthonios retells a portion of the Greek creation myth focusing especially on how the Olympian gods came to power and overthrew the older Titans, and more specifically Kronos. Hades and his escape from Kronos' 'prison' (which in the original myth was Kronos' eating the main Olympian gods until he was forced to vomit them back up again), is the focus of most of this retelling, though many other gods, goddesses, historical traditions, and mythical planes and places are summoned up as well.
The retelling is fun up to a point, especially in that it allows the author's imagination to really fly as to making up reasons for events, causes and effects, and mythical world-building and magical powers-building. The 'story' does drag a bit in more than a few places since the general outcome is already known to the average reader, so one limit this genre inherently has is that the lists of imagined, extrapolated details start to grind the action down and turn the work into more of an exercise in making sure all bases are covered with a 'competing' counter-reason so that the newly re-imagined mythical world is complete, all the while the story is, as stated, mostly already known to the reader.
The writing itself is exquisite, and the author seems to have spent a great amount of time on creating a smooth and accurate, balanced, script that is well structured.
But the nature of the genre leaves out a lot of opportunity for tension, drama, or vivid action, all of which would add some spice and urgency to the story and would liven it up for the reader considerably. I would give the quality of writing five stars, but the lack of engaging action or compelling/unexpected plot aspects three stars, so my averaged out rating for this work by M. M. Kin is four stars. I'm sure fans of the genre will really enjoy reading over Kin's alternative interpretation and her ideas of how the Kronos vs Olympians conflict played out.
Khthonios retells a portion of the Greek creation myth focusing especially on how the Olympian gods came to power and overthrew the older Titans, and more specifically Kronos. Hades and his escape from Kronos' 'prison' (which in the original myth was Kronos' eating the main Olympian gods until he was forced to vomit them back up again), is the focus of most of this retelling, though many other gods, goddesses, historical traditions, and mythical planes and places are summoned up as well.
The retelling is fun up to a point, especially in that it allows the author's imagination to really fly as to making up reasons for events, causes and effects, and mythical world-building and magical powers-building. The 'story' does drag a bit in more than a few places since the general outcome is already known to the average reader, so one limit this genre inherently has is that the lists of imagined, extrapolated details start to grind the action down and turn the work into more of an exercise in making sure all bases are covered with a 'competing' counter-reason so that the newly re-imagined mythical world is complete, all the while the story is, as stated, mostly already known to the reader.
The writing itself is exquisite, and the author seems to have spent a great amount of time on creating a smooth and accurate, balanced, script that is well structured.
But the nature of the genre leaves out a lot of opportunity for tension, drama, or vivid action, all of which would add some spice and urgency to the story and would liven it up for the reader considerably. I would give the quality of writing five stars, but the lack of engaging action or compelling/unexpected plot aspects three stars, so my averaged out rating for this work by M. M. Kin is four stars. I'm sure fans of the genre will really enjoy reading over Kin's alternative interpretation and her ideas of how the Kronos vs Olympians conflict played out.
November 5, 2020
M.M. Kin’s Khthonios is a well researched retelling of Hades origins. While the author does her research, her true talent lies in taking that material and weaving it into a story that is compelling and accessible to all readers, without any pretentious literary snobbery. This impressed me greatly.
If you lover her earlier trilogy Seeds, you’ll love this one.
Highly recommended.
If you lover her earlier trilogy Seeds, you’ll love this one.
Highly recommended.
April 23, 2021
I love reading Greek mythology retellings, and Kin’s novels are no exception. I’ve known since her Seed’s series that she puts an amazing amount of detail, all painstakingly researched, into her novels, but I was curious how she was going to handle that in Khthonios, because based not the summary, there were two major hurdles to overcome in writing this book.
The first is that Khthonios is a prequel story which begins with the death of Uranus and covers the rise and fall of Kronos, the imprisonment and freedom of the “Big Six” and Hades’s eventual rise to the Lord of the Underworld. There is precious little out there that covers this fascinating time period, but Kin managed to include the existing lore (real mind-benders, like Kronos eating his children) in a way that felt logical and true to the world.
The second is that prequels represent a real challenge for character development, because as an author, there’s this fixed point you can’t cross in your earlier work. But you’re learning more about your characters as you write and they’re going through things that will impact their development. Often prequel characters either feel stagnant or more developed than their later counterparts, but Kin handles that development deftly. These characters felt consistent, and the story gave insight into some of their eccentricities in the later books.
As always, Kin utilizes incredible detail and imagery. Her writing style in this book reminded me a bit of of the early chapters of Miller’s Circe. I think this may be my favorite book in her world yet.
The first is that Khthonios is a prequel story which begins with the death of Uranus and covers the rise and fall of Kronos, the imprisonment and freedom of the “Big Six” and Hades’s eventual rise to the Lord of the Underworld. There is precious little out there that covers this fascinating time period, but Kin managed to include the existing lore (real mind-benders, like Kronos eating his children) in a way that felt logical and true to the world.
The second is that prequels represent a real challenge for character development, because as an author, there’s this fixed point you can’t cross in your earlier work. But you’re learning more about your characters as you write and they’re going through things that will impact their development. Often prequel characters either feel stagnant or more developed than their later counterparts, but Kin handles that development deftly. These characters felt consistent, and the story gave insight into some of their eccentricities in the later books.
As always, Kin utilizes incredible detail and imagery. Her writing style in this book reminded me a bit of of the early chapters of Miller’s Circe. I think this may be my favorite book in her world yet.
January 12, 2022
I read this book while I was also reading “Worthy of Love” (focusing on Hephaistos), written by the same author. What I wrote in my review of that other novel also rings true here: the author does a wonderfully imaginative job of deconstructing select events of Greek mythology, embellishing upon them by filling them with detail, dialogue, and lots of heart, and then putting it all back together in a artful and graceful manner. The end result is a very enjoyable story that remains true to the original source material, while offering a fresh take on these myths that will appeal to the tastes and sensibilities of contemporary readers. Top marks for execution, in my opinion.
I had little idea of what I was getting into when I started reading this book, other than that Greek mythology was the inspiration. Once I got into the meat of the story, I was delighted to find that it focuses on Hades, who as the god of the dead and king of the underworld, is one of the more interesting deities in the Greek pantheon.
I feel the story of Hades in Greek mythology is already quite fascinating, but it benefits here from the application of creative liberties of the author. Hades, along with the other characters of the book, become much more nuanced and complex, dismissing (or more accurately, enhancing) the traditional portrayal of theses well known figures. I am by no means disparaging Greek mythology – Greek mythology is awesome (it literally inspires awe), and that’s why it remains relevant and enthralling today, several millennia after its creation. However, as a reader in this day and age, I find an elaborated story such as this to be more appealing than that of a text book.
Khthonios can be quite heady at times, given the cosmic scope. The scale varies from commonplace (such as some dialogues between characters) to downright epic (the interactions of gods and Titans). Broken into short chapters that are further divided into smaller sections, the book is a quick-ish, enjoyable read, particularly for anybody with enthusiasm for the subject matter.
I had little idea of what I was getting into when I started reading this book, other than that Greek mythology was the inspiration. Once I got into the meat of the story, I was delighted to find that it focuses on Hades, who as the god of the dead and king of the underworld, is one of the more interesting deities in the Greek pantheon.
I feel the story of Hades in Greek mythology is already quite fascinating, but it benefits here from the application of creative liberties of the author. Hades, along with the other characters of the book, become much more nuanced and complex, dismissing (or more accurately, enhancing) the traditional portrayal of theses well known figures. I am by no means disparaging Greek mythology – Greek mythology is awesome (it literally inspires awe), and that’s why it remains relevant and enthralling today, several millennia after its creation. However, as a reader in this day and age, I find an elaborated story such as this to be more appealing than that of a text book.
Khthonios can be quite heady at times, given the cosmic scope. The scale varies from commonplace (such as some dialogues between characters) to downright epic (the interactions of gods and Titans). Broken into short chapters that are further divided into smaller sections, the book is a quick-ish, enjoyable read, particularly for anybody with enthusiasm for the subject matter.
April 2, 2022
This was soooo disappointing. This book being about the Titanomachy I was expecting epic battles, action, and intrigue. The final (and only) battle at the end felt rushed. There’s also no depth to the characters making it hard for you to really feel attached to any of the characters. Zero character development. The only scene I really enjoyed was the interaction between Osiris and Hades. But appart from that it felt flat and very repetitive and boring. I nearly didn’t finish it.
August 15, 2024
"She found her body responding in a way that countless millennia of evolution had ingrained into the female sex" is a truly bizarre way to say she was horny.
August 10, 2024
I'm a sucker for a Mythological retelling
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews