Guest Post and Giveaway: Solstice: Myth Depicted

As I said in my review of SOLSTICE, today I'm repping Team Myth on P.J. Hoover's blog tour.  And that means a guest post for you guys with lots of pretty pictures!  Don't worry, Team Dystopia is getting some pretty pictures too.

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SOLSTICE: MYTH DEPICTED

Hi! P. J. Hoover here, author of the upcoming dystopian/mythology YA novel, SOLSTICE (Tor Teen, June 18, 2013), and today I’m depicting the mythology side of SOLSTICE with pictures! I’ve opted for real-life inspirations that made it into the book. And for the blog tour, depictions are divided into two groups: Team Myth and Team Dystopia. Over here is Team Myth!

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Five Images that Depict the Mythology World of SOLSTICE:

1) The Jar

Piper gets a mysterious present delivered to her house near the beginning of the story. When she opens it, everything around her begins to change.

2) Cerberus

My dog, Cissy, provided the inspiration for Cerberus, the fierce, three-headed dog who guards the Underworld.

3) The River Lethe

The River Lethe was inspired by the Red River, which separates Oklahoma from Texas.

4) Shayne’s gardens

Shayne has a garden he tends in the Underworld, and in the garden is a waterfall. Cascades Falls near Virginia Tech (where I went to college) inspired the scene.

5) Dual suns

The Underworld is much like our world, but it has two suns. There is no picture with two suns I love so much as this one from Star Wars.

Just for the record, every book could do with a good Star Trek or Star Wars nod.

Anyway, thank you for reading and for your support!

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About SOLSTICE:
Piper's world is dying. Each day brings hotter temperatures and heat bubbles that threaten to destroy the earth. Amid this global heating crisis, Piper lives under the oppressive rule of her mother, who suffocates her even more than the weather does. Everything changes on her eighteenth birthday, when her mother is called away on a mysterious errand and Piper seizes her first opportunity for freedom.

Piper discovers a universe she never knew existed—a sphere of gods and monsters—and realizes that her world is not the only one in crisis. While gods battle for control of the Underworld, Piper’s life spirals out of control as she struggles to find the answer to the secret that has been kept from her since birth.

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Bio:
P. J. Hoover first fell in love with Greek mythology in sixth grade thanks to the book MYTHOLOGY by Edith Hamilton. After a fifteen year bout as an electrical engineer designing computer chips for a living, P. J. decided to take her own stab at mythology and started writing books for kids and teens. When not writing, P. J. spends time with her husband and two kids and enjoys practicing kung fu, solving Rubik's cubes, and watching Star Trek. Her first novel for teens, SOLSTICE (Tor Teen, June 18, 2013), takes place in a global warming future and explores the parallel world of mythology beside our own. Her middle grade novel, TUT (Tor Children's, 2014), tells the story of a young immortal King Tut, who's been stuck in middle school for over 3,000 years and must defeat an ancient enemy with the help of a dorky kid from school, a mysterious Egyptian princess, and a one-eyed cat. For more information about P. J. (Tricia) Hoover, please visit her website www.pjhoover.com.
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Review and Giveaway: Solstice

By P.J. Hoover
Available now from Tor Teen
Review copy

I am part of the Mod Podge Blog Tour for SOLSTICE and I'm repping Team Myth today.  You can stop by Girls in the Stacks to read the Team Dystopia post.  Stop by here later today for a guest blog by P.J. Hoover on Solstice: Myth Depicted.  I'm excited to be taking part in this tour as well as reviewing SOLSTICE, because I used to live in Austin and Hoover is pretty well known around those parts.

Some of you might have already read SOLSTICE, since Hoover self published it first.  I haven't read that version, so I don't know if there have been changes or not.  But SOLSTICE doesn't read like it's behind on trends.  It's not so much a true dystopia as it is the tale of a society on the edge of apocalypse.  For the past eighteen years, it's been summer all the time, and even the the summer-hardened denizens of Austin can barely handle it.  And most of the countermeasures put in place by the government just further harm the environment.

Piper, who just turned eighteen, chafes under the close watch of her overprotective mother.  The only time she gets out is with her best friend, Chloe, her lifeline to normalcy.  Then Piper meets two strange, super hot guys: Shayne and Reese.  Things start getting strange and Piper starts to realize almost everyone in her life is lying to her.  But she knows one things for sure: Chloe is going to die.  All Piper wants is the truth, her best friend's life, and freedom from her mother's oppressive love.

Fans of Greek myth will cotton on to the story being retold as soon as they see the graphic finial at the beginning of each chapter.  But Hoover does not tell it straight.  She references a variety of myths and orchestrates a tour of the Underworld that put me more in a mind of Dante's Inferno than Hamilton's Mythology.  At the same time, Hoover doesn't bog herself down too much in allusions.  SOLSTICE is perfectly readable even if you've never heard any of the myths.

I liked that the stakes in SOLSTICE didn't come down to Piper's romantic inclinations.  She has her own part to play in the balance of the world, and it is up to her to decide where and how she'll live.  Much of the book is about Piper going out and getting answers, even though people don't want her to have them, and then using that information to make her choices.  I loved watching Piper learn that she had the power to make and assert her own decisions.

That being said, the love story ain't half bad.  In does read a little like instalove, although there is more too it than that.  I was turned off by the initial love triangle setup, but it isn't really a love triangle.  Piper isn't torn between two guys.  (And let me tell you, I was very happy when a certain someone got their comeuppance.  Myths are good about that.)

SOLSTICE is an inventive novel that really gets the pages flipping.  While I am Team Myth all the way, I enjoyed the future world Hoover created.  It was easy to image in the heat, killing the plants, causing humanity to retreat to domes, overwhelming and oppressive.  It feels like a realistic possibility, no matter than the explanation is fairly fantastic. I look forward to whatever Hoover writes next.
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