Interesting book that mixed Greek mythos with fantasy. I didn't really like the prose style, it felt forced constantly, which didn't allow me to connect with the characters. The plot itself was a bit basic, but I did end up enjoying it and the ending was particularly good.

I love fantasy, I love Greek Mythology. Both in one book, what could go wrong!
The book is as action packed as the blurb would lead you to believe. A fantastic opening to the series, would definitely recommend.

Panacea is an interesting spin on the ancient Greek myths. The city states and culture are ancient Greek to a tee but there is a nice slant with the inclusion of mythical creatures thrown in. Full of treachery and foreboding, it is an action-packed yarn but with an undercurrent of pain caused by grief.

This book was good, I’m not one for action or books based on ancient times but it was good. The characters were pretty well written seemed easy to follow along.

Panacea is the first book in a new epic fantasy series that is inspired by Ancient Greece. There is a lot of focus on the military of Ancient Greece. The main character is Dexios who is a strategos of Thena's phalanx who is leading a defensive charge against a group of tauros.

This story was very well researched and gives a lot of details on workings of Ancient Greece. Luckily, the book includes a list of Greek terms that are used often in the book, because there are a lot of uncommon terms to learn to enjoy the story. The battle scenes were very well written and enjoyable to read. The story opens up and becomes a lot more interesting and unexpected in the second half going beyond the simple Greek military tale it appeared to be at first.

I would recommend checking out this series if you are a fan of epic fantasy and are interested in Ancient Greece.

Panacea is set in a Greek Mythology inspired world where Hera and her pantheon of goddesses have defeated Zeus and his pantheon of Gods (now known as the ruined) and banished them from Olympus.

Apologies ahead of time for any misspelling below.

Dexios, a Strategos that dreams of retirement) and his son (a newly trained ephebe who has only just been given his spear and apsis) find themselves thrust into a battle against the taurans (minotaurs).

Elena, a Sophestis (teacher), is left behind to put together the pieces of a mystery in the city of Thebes to find out who is murdering people and why..

I absolutely loved this book. It deals heavily with war and conflict, loyalty and betrayal. There is a heavy question of how far would you go for someone you love? Are the gods worthy of loyalty?

Several moments in this book had my heart in my throat and genuinely brought a tear to my eye. It is very viscerally graphic in places, a lot of descriptive gore but I feel that with a book that is heavily portraying battles and war the graphic was a necessity. I look forward to reading book two in the future.

This Greek-inspired fantasy sees young fledgling Greek warriors sent straight from the training grounds to a large battle against a herd of minotaurs. Not many survive and those who do are far from safe.
There is a small and well-defined cast of characters in this book, from the young warriors (some noble and heroic, others utter ball-bags), to their trainers and teachers and right up to senior leaders of the city states.
The plot covers the training and conflicts among the trainees, into the battle and beyond. We see battle scenes, detective work (mysterious events in the city following the army rolling out), intrigue and conspiracy, prophecy and double-crossing gods.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and any pacing issues I felt at the time were down to me and not the book itself.
Very much recommended for low fantasy fans (almost like Paternus in ancient times).

I'm a fan of Greek mythology and was pleased with this book. I enjoyed the the dual perspective of a father and son. It was interesting to see how they both viewed and understood things. I also enjoyed the writing style of the author. It was definitely a fun and easy read for me. I will be looking into more books by this author.

This book was very ambitious. It examined a father-son relationship, husband-wife relationship, trauma, while mixing in war, betrayal, bravery, and Greek mythology. But I don't think any of these things were fully explored. They all worked really well together but I feel like it could have been stretched into a trilogy.
However, the internal struggles of the characters and their growth as people was very well done. Very impressive.

This is a descriptive piece of Greek inspired epic fantasy. I personally don't have a strong connection to that time period or the surrounding mythology. I liked aspects of the story but I never felt strongly connected to the details or characters of this world. If you find Greek mythology fascinating, then you will likely love this one even more than I did.

Disclaimer I received a copy of this book from the publisher.

For decades, Dexios had served his city state of Thena as a Strategos. A heavy burden, all he wants is to see his son pass his ephebic trials and to retire to his vineyards. But a old enemy is rearing its head and Dexios will soon know no peace.

Panacea is an interesting spin on the ancient Greek myths. The city states and culture are ancient Greek to a tee (to my uncultured eyes) but there is a nice slant with the inclusion of mythical creatures thrown in. Full of treachery and foreboding, it is an action-packed yarn but with an undercurrent of pain caused by grief.

I really enjoyed this novel from Indie author, Alex Robins. Don't like the fact that the author is Indie put you off because this is just as good as many traditionally published novels I have read. And the artwork is stunning!

Ancient Greek gods aplenty, with a massive twist on the old tales, it is refreshingly new in a genre that has seen a glut of ancient Greek retellings. Prophecy, intrigue and treachery are a heavy part of the story; some you see coming, some you don't. It is heavy on the male POV but then again, many of the myths were, herowise at least. I did get slightIy confused with the names but as I said, uncultured! I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys ancient Greek-based epics, especially The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

I received a copy of this book from the author via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Dark, gripping, page-turning! This is how I would describe Alex Robins' new fantasy book. I am new to this genre but I feel that this book is a great place to start.

There is so much in this book that it would be difficult to start anywhere. To be honest I feel I'd be too tempted to give spoilers. Let's just say that once you start this book you will not be ready to put it down. You will want to continue to binge read to the last page and then be left wanting more.

Panacea: An Ancient Greek-inspired Epic Fantasy by Alex Robins, a fun title that had elements of recognizable greek influence twisted just enough to be really enjoyable.

I love Greek mythology, but I’m not super well-read on Ancient Greek culture/warfare. This author definitely is and that’s not necessary a good thing. Starting off with a giant vocabulary list I’m going to forget immediately? Not ideal. Thankfully, the context clues were usually enough that I wasn’t lost, however there was probably some nuance lost.

The story itself was fairly interesting though. Characters were compelling and felt real. The dialogue wasn’t clunky and usually sounded like how actual people speak.

🌠 In collaboration with Netgalley. Thank you for the free arc! 🌠

This is a author who I had never heard of but wish I had sooner, and one I will be following from now on.
The writing is phenomenal in characters, world building and plot, something I do not find often unfortunately.

The story is both a tale of tragedy and hope. One of the pain of losing a child and how far one will go to get them back.

I relate to Elana the most I think, the hopelessness she feels in the face of change and the sorrow of seeing so much pain she can not fix but the stubborn resolve to not give up.

I greve for Dexios, for all he has seen and lost. I understand why he would go to such lengths to get his son back, what parent would not?

What to say of all the other characters? They feel real, not just the pov characters but to me as the reader.

I could say much more but in effort to not spoil the whole book I will say this, this is a book that will stay with me for forever and I highly anticipate the sequel.

Thanks to NetGalley for providing me with an arc of this title, in exchange for this honest review.

This book had me tentatively hopeful for some well crafted Ancient Greek inspired fantasy. As a classicist who not only has a profound love for the ancient Mediterranean, but for fantasy as well, it’s been something I’ve desired to read for many years now. Unfortunately, this failed miserable at doing that.

In fact, calling this something inspired by Ancient Greece feels like a blatant lie. Whilst reading it became painfully obvious that the author had done little to no research into any of the diverse city states and their various constitutions and cultures, the architecture of the time, the language and worldview. Rather, I think a good pitch for this would have been “for fans of 300, Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, Troy and Gladiator”, as that was clearly backbone of the research that was put into this.

Already in the glossary, it mistranslates Greek words. To give an example, malaka, which the book translates to a curse meaning “idiot” and “fool”. This is incorrect, malaka, or rather μᾰλᾰκός, means soft or gentle. Yes, it is used as a curse on occasions, but then it’s “soft” as in “weak”. To elaborate further on the language, this book could have done a lot more research. There’s a point where a character refers to his father as a tyrant, which has wholly different connotations back then. A tyrant was someone who took absolutely power in a coup, and quite often the early tyrants were incredibly popular. So popular, in fact, they didn’t need bodyguards whilst walking around the city they ruled. The same, however, could not be said for their descendants. Further more, as an adjective, tyrant could simply mean kingly. Couple this information with the fact the city state is not a democracy like in Athens, the word tyrant would not have gotten a negative connotation. Further more, I found a grammatical error. The invading force in this book a giant bull men, like the Minotaur, the book calls these Tauros, plural: Tauros. This is just grammatically wrong, even in English. In English, this would have been Tauroses and in Greek Tauroi. I do think the word for these creatures could have been better, since Tauros just means bull, meaning I just imagined a bunch of very persistent bulls grazing on their fields and not leaving. Also it really bothered me that these had very fantasy-esque names compared to the very Greek humans. It’s just hard to imagine, as A: the linguistics would have to be at least slightly similar in two cultures so close to each other and B: the Minotaur, which these are clearly based off of, has a Greek name. His actual name is Asterion, which means “starry” and is quite beautiful. This could have made the monsters seem more ‘human’ and thus sympathetic, making the situation more morally grey and interesting. The book also uses the word phalanx to mean army. For those who don’t know: a phalanx is the formation the army, called stratos in Ancient Greek. Finally, the names were poorly thought out. There were names that had latinized spellings, some that didn’t, some that first started to appear in Greece along with Christianity and have Hebrew roots and the one that irked me the most: Keres. I’d you don’t know, the Keres are female death spirits. So not only does the main character’s son have a name in the feminine declension, it was also in plural. Stuff like this is literally the backbone of the language and by having a singular person with this name? You broke it. You broke Ancient Greek, congratulations.

As for the world building, it lacks both the vibrant color (quite literally, too) and diverse sub cultures of Greece. Each city state was exactly the same, robbing Ancient Greece of what makes it so interesting. It lacked the individual cultures of each city states, the cultures of the four main tribes (Ionians, Dorics, etc.) the city states were divided amongst and all the layers of internal conflict this brought. It made the world stale and boring in comparison to what it could have been. Each city state is ruled by a Basileus and that’s it. You’ve made kingdoms. If you wanted kingdoms, you could have done Homeric Greece and taken inspiration from the fascinating Greek Bronze Age and Mycenaean and Minoan civilizations.

Furthermore, the spartan inspiration is pretty clear. But again, clearly written by a person with no clue how Sparta functioned. I would have liked for this book to have dived further into that: delve into the trauma these people arguably got in the spartan education system, delve into parents having to give up their sons at an early age for this and high mortality rates, dive into how the spartan women had more social and economic freedom than their counterparts in the rest of Greece. It would honestly have made the main character more sympathetic to a modern audience too. With the echos of Sparta this world had, I saw no reason why the main character and his wife could have gotten less of an age gap, which would have made them more appealing to the modern reading this, as spartan women were older and spartan men generally younger when they married, thus creating more equal (though not fully) than in the rest of Greece. Or you know, it could have examined her being married off to a man 11 years your senior was terrible. But noooo. Now: new topic of worldbuilding, which I’ll keep short as this review is getting long; buildings and statues weren’t white, they were painted in very vibrant colors. Also, how rich is he to have a house purely of marble? There are other stones the Greeks built with you know, like limestone.

Now, back to the main character being stupid. There’s a line where he talks about having short hair, despite long hair being a symbol of a free man, to be more practical during fighting. Yes, hello again Sparta. You wanna know what the Spartans did, that frankly makes the main character seem even more stupid? They braided it. Literally just braid it and the problem is solved.

Now you might say “it’s not actual Ancient Greece, it’s fantasy inspired by it!!” If not Greece, why very Greek (and very mistranslated) glossary? If not Greece, why Greek gods? Honestly that annoyed me too. How hard was it to make up new gods? They could have been exactly the same, but with new names. It’s not hard to make names in Ancient Greek, you just smack words together. Heck, the author could even have found a list of Ancient Greek names and chosen then and I’d be happy. Also saying Charon’s embrace when referring to death is not as cool as you think it is. Charon isn’t death, he’s just the ferryman. Thanatos is death personified, so arguably it should have been “Thanatos’ embrace”. Oh also, what happened to the army being super queer? The Sacred Band of Thebes (theban troop of soldiers that consisted of 150 pairs of gay couples) didn’t absolutely destroy the Spartans, military powerhouse of Greece, to be met with this level of disrespect. Philosophical texts literally state that the army having gay couples made it better.

Anyways, rant review over I guess. The writing style was decent enough, but the characters lacked flavor, certain things were too obvious it made emotional moments laughable and the marketing / pitch should, as previously stated, not have been Ancient Greece, but some of the movies, tvshows and games the author arguably drew his inspirations from.

Author Robins reimagines the Greek Pantheon in this fantasy tale. He has created interesting three dimensional characters. There are plot elements that are a bit unwieldy and unnecessary, but the story overall is good.

Three and a half stars. The ending left open the possibility of a sequel and I would read that. My thanks to Bradypus Publishing via NetGalley. All expressed opinions are my own.

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Panacea is a story as braving and action-oriented as its cover promises. Adventurous, steeped in lore and mythic turns, and perfect for fans of Conan and similar stories.

The characters, in the book, pull the reader into the story. Each of them has their own tale to share or hide, which gives the reader almost too many suspects. Hellishly good!

Thank you netgalley for the advanced readers copy! This was a diamond straight diamond! I was not expecting this to be so good! A great Greek mythology story. A fantastic start to a hopefully epic aeries! Read this now!!!