Format: Hardcover
ISBN 9781599901961
253 Pages
Series? Pandora | 1
Rating: Middle School
Source: Library
Challenge: None
GoodReads
13-year-old Pandora Atheneus Andromaeche Helena (or Pandy, for short) has no idea what she’ll bring for her school project. By accident she discovers a simple box, said to contain something so terrifying and horrible that no one must ever, ever touch it for fear of inflicting all of mankind with the wrath of the Gods and Goddesses. This, of course, makes the box the perfect thing for Pandora to bring for her school project. Unfortunately, things don’t go quite the way she was hoping, and the box accidentally gets opened, unleashing all kinds of evil and misery into the world. Hauled before Zeus, Hera and the rest of immortals, Pandy’s given the task of collecting all the evils within a year’s time.
This book will never get an award for accuracy but it is entertaining and I was sucked in to the story as soon as the end of the first page.
Pandora is the daughter of the Titan Prometheus and a woman who is not famous for anything that I can think of named, Sybilline. She is very vain and selfish and while she like her youngest son she really treats Pandy like the red headed step-child even though Xander is the one who was born with a peacock tail. She is thirteen and is in that stage where everything is wrong with her and she has just wants to impress her classmates and stay out of trouble with her teacher. This is exactly what gets her into trouble in the end. Her entire school is participating in an event where they show "What Have the Gods Done for You Lately?" And her teacher expects them to bring something that will wow the judges or else they will be forced to clean her nails. So she decides to bring the box that her father had forbidden her to touch with the promise to bring it back immediately afterward. Yeah, right.
So I was really annoyed in the beginning that Pandora got in trouble so much when technically she is not the one to open the box but .... and .... who really opened the box.
Alcie and Iole grow on me as the story progresses because of their personalities. While Alcie is very outspoken whether it is a byproduct of what happened by being near the box when it opened or it is her natural personality Iole is the very different but smart as well as a year younger than both Pandora and Alcie. My favorite character so far is a tie between Pandora's dog Dido and Hephaestus. Why? Well Dido is adorable and funny and Hephaestus is so cute when he gets flustered when Pandora kisses him on the cheek.
On the down side the book has a lot of language that sounds as if it is trying really hard to make the book feel as if is was set in the past but only bugged me. Really badly.
ex. "I love you, Dad. Big-time phileo."
"Me you more, my daughter," he said.
I did not like this. I get that Carolyn is trying to make it seem a little authentic but I thought that she did not need to just murder grammar while she did it. The story also had a Flintstone feel to it because the book used too much 2008 concepts and covered it up barely by changing the names. While I was really bugged by these things I was however able to ignore them because I really wanted to know what happened in the end. Finally while the book is about jealously Pandora only really felt the full extent of the escaped plague for barely a page long.
Oh, wait one more thing: Why did she ignore Persephone? She is a goddess and she is Hades' wife and yet she is never mentioned except for in the glossary. As my favorite goddess I was super disappointed there.
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