Hippolyta and the Curse of the Amazons

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Summary: All About Hippolyta and the Curse of the Amazons
Review: Hippolyta and the Curse of the Amazons is about 14 year old Hippolyta, who is a amazon princess. Amazons are women who never marry. One of their laws is that if the queen bears a second son, it is to be sacrificed to the goddess that they beleive in, Artemis.Hippolyta's Mother is the queen, and she gives birth to a second son, but she refuses to let him be sacrificed. She is sent to prison, leaving Hippolyta and her four sisters in greif. One night, Hippolyta is sent by a sorceress-like woman to see her mother. Her mother asks her to bring the baby to it's father in a city called Troy. Troy happens to be a long way away from Hippolyta's home, and at first she protests. Her Mother talks to her and finally persuades Hippolyta to do it, sending Hippolyta on the journey of a lifetime. On her way, Hippolyta battles men, sea monsters, gryphons, and even Artemis herself. On the way, Hippolyta learns that she has true courage, love, and loyalty that she wasn't even aware of. Hippolyta and the Curse of the Amazons is a must read for those who like books that are full of adventure, fantasy, and horror. Hippolyta and the Curse of the Amazons is a thriller and will keep you on the edge of your seat from beginning to end!

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Summary: Didn't work
Review: I expected nothing but the best from this book, after the stellar "Odysseus and the Serpent's Maze." That one had an endearingly flawed but smart hero, a strong female lead, and a sense of wow-this-could-have-happened. I am sorry to say that its sequel does not.

Hippolyta is one of the princesses of the Amazons, a race of woman warriors who exist completely without men and who prize strength and prowess above all. But her world is thrown into turmoil when her mother has a baby - a boy, her second. There is a prophecy that all second boys must be sacrificed to Artemis, or a horrible curse will befall the Amazons. Except Hippolyta's mother refuses to let her child be killed.

Hippolyta ends up fleeing the city with her baby half-brother, Podarces, and goes to the city of Troy, where the baby's father lives. But circumstances cause her to end up on the run with the Trojan king's other son -- who happens to be her other half-brother, Tithonus. As disasteful as she finds the boy, Hippolyta ends up needing his help -- and that of the gods -- to lift the hideous curse from her people.

This book is -- how shall I say it? -- annoying. The pace of it is uneven, and though the writing has the right balance of description and sparity it fails to really come to life. It felt like the authors had gotten a good idea, but lost inspiration for it somewhere along the way.

And the biggest flaw is the characterizations. Hippolyta is a whiny, self-absorbed, sexist brat who spends most of the book seething over how UNFAIR people and fate are to her, or about what hideous nasty creatures men are. Though she's supposed to change her mind about men, that particular spot of character development feels tacked on. Her rivals and the warrior queen are two-dimensionally nasty, without a single redeeming characteristic. Tithonus actually IS a sympathetic character, whose motivations are fully believable. I found it especially annoying that Hippolyta is perpetually obnoxious (and then near-murderous) toward him.

And, in addition to all this, the plot unravels near the end. We get to see three of the gods, but they resemble less the stately goddess featured in "Odysseus" than the petty deities of "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys." The climax is too astonishingly bad to be believed.

There are worse books out there, but there are many, many better ones as well. Saddled with a selfish, nasty heroine and a meandering plot, this is not recommended. Better wait for the upcoming "Atalanta" book.

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Summary: Hippolyta... Excellent!
Review: I loved this book. It shows that women can do something besides sitting at home like in other stories.

This book is about Hippolyta, one of the princesses of the Amazons. Hippolyta has three sisters and a brother whom she's never met. The story starts and then Queen Otre, Hippolyta's mother, has a baby. It's a boy and the queen cannot have more than one boy live. Unfortunantly, they have to sacrifice the baby, but Queen Otre doesn't want to.

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Summary: Brilliant characters and a great romp through mythology
Review: Yolen and Harris have, once again, produced a terrifically fun book in their Young Heroes series. The basic premise - of looking at characters from Greek myth when they were children - is intrinsically full of interest, and with writers like these two in charge, it works beautifully.

One of the (many) great strengths of the collaboration of Yolen and Harris is the singular depth of the characterization. Throughout the book, Hippolyta is - well, a teenager. By turns charming, despairing, arrogant, boastful, and deeply self-absorbed, with all the focused self-righteousness of one who has never questioned what she has been told. This beats the 'the heroine/ hero is always sympathetic' vein of writing children's books hollow. Even I know too many teenagers to buy that one!

This is a coming-of-age novel in a profound sense, as Hippolyta is forced by circumstances - of kinship with a babe and a younger brother, of dealing with the gods and with more immediately threatening human enemies, of dealing with her own history and heritage - to examine her beliefs and her actions for the first time. That she does so with occasional ill-grace and stubbornness, while still acting like a true hero - saving unfortunates in distress, fighting off gryphons in a ruined city, even facing up to the gods - is a lovely tang of reality in this journey towards self-realization.

The book also has large doses of wry humour, like its companion volume Odysseus in the Serpent Maze, which makes it a fun read for both children and adults. The fact that the authors have woven into the book so much historical/archaeological information that I, for one, didn't know about Amazons, is really just the icing on the rich and satisfying cake of this novel.