Against All Gods

Maz Evans's Against All Gods is a funny, heartfelt Greek myth adventure for 9 year olds about a boy who'll do anything to get his mum back, even hand the world to the Daemon of Death.

What happens

It's the last of four books about Elliot Hooper, so your reader will want the others first. Elliot Hooper is in Tartarus, the worst bit of the Underworld. Thanatos has promised him that if he collects the last of the four Chaos Stones, he'll bring back Elliot's mum, Josie. The catch is that the Fire Stone sits at the bottom of a river of fire.

Meanwhile everyone else is scrambling to stop him. Virgo breaks out of prison with the Zodiac Council, who want to vote on everything (including whether to escape). Zeus and his ex-wife Hera bicker over a chair. The gods can't even get into the Underworld because Hermes's passport ran out millennia ago.

It's properly funny. Hypnos hands Elliot factor 57,000 sun cream for the flames. Ares arrives on a rope through the ceiling and lands face first on the table. Cerberus works security and moans about his wife's clothes budget (all three of his heads do).

But the jokes sit right next to something very real. Elliot's mum has died, and the book is honest about how grief feels. He builds a "dam" inside himself against every wave of missing her. He can't sleep, because every dream has her in it and every morning takes her away again.

Worth knowing before you hand it over

Josie's death has already happened when this book begins, but it's the centre of everything Elliot does. There's a scene where Thanatos shows him his mum's face in the flames, and another where Elliot gives up and waits for the end. If your reader has lost someone close, it could hit hard, so it's one to be around for.

For a reader who's followed Elliot this far, though, it's laugh-out-loud one minute and lump-in-your-throat the next. And it really does get that you can feel both at once.

What to read next

Elliot's story starts in Who Let the Gods Out, where Elliot is worn out from secretly looking after his mum and in trouble with the world's worst history teacher.