Furious – Jill Wolfson

    Three high school girls become the avenging Furies of Greek legend.
    We were only three angry girls, to begin with. Alix, the hot-tempered surfer chick; Stephanie, the tree-hugging activist; and me, Meg, the quiet foster kid, the one who never quite fit in. We hardly knew each other, but each of us nurtured a burning anger: at the jerks in our class, at our disappointing parents, at the whole flawed, unjust world.
    We were only three angry girls, simmering uselessly in our ocean-side California town, until one day a mysterious, beautiful classmate named Ambrosia taught us what else we could be: Powerful. Deadly. Furious.

I’ve always been interested in mythology even since I was a youngster, so I’ve really been into trying to pick up mythology retellings lately. When I hear about FURIOUS, I was like “HMMM. The Furies myth redone? I’m curious!” Sadly, curious was about as far as it went. I made it about halfway through before I found myself reading quickly, forcing myself to finish.

For those of you that aren’t familiar with the myth, the gist of it is that the three Furies were born from the blood and anger of the god Uranus after he was… erm, castrated (I can see why he was pissed) and they are responsible for the eye-for-and-eye type of justice in the world. In the retelling of FURIOUS, they’re three high school teenagers who are “discovered” to have the powers of the Furies deep within them and when the three hone into their skills, they can bring the high school jerks to their knees, right the wrongs of their own home lives, and bring even bigger justices to the world.

It’s hard to judge and say that this could have been done better since I’m not sitting here writing my own retelling, but I just didn’t feel like this interpretation of the myth came off well. All of the specifics and background of the myth were included in the book so it’s definitely thorough and accurate, but as a retelling, I think I wanted it to be LESS accurate. It was so integrated in the original myth that I feel like it almost got boxed in and pieces were forced to fit together that didn’t really go together. Some of the characters felt forced, the situations were the Furies use their power seemed a little silly, and I just felt like as a whole, it didn’t really come together to make one cohesive story. Personally, I would have liked to see a looser interpretation of the myth to fit more of a high school setting since it was drawn up for YA versus a more literal retelling and having some of it feel unauthentic to its setting.

As far as characters go, I didn’t really feel a connection to any of them. Except for maybe Raymond, the main character Meg’s best friend… And now that I’m thinking about it, maybe because he wasn’t a part of the myth so he wasn’t forced into a specific role? The development of the Furies’ powers and how they discover them didn’t feel natural for me and Meg as our main character wasn’t likable. I sympathized with her for the most part, but I mean, they’re FURIES. They’re mad, they want revenge, they want justice. It’s hard to connect with main characters who are basically pictured like bad guys who think they’re good guys.

FURIOUS just wasn’t for me. I rushed through the second half of the book so I could finish it, but really, I just wasn’t interested. I actually found myself not caring what happened to the end but it was going by pretty quickly so I figured I might as well finish. This was close to being a DNF for me but I pushed through it.

Meg: Yeah, I didn’t really like Meg. She didn’t have much of a personality and once she got “furious” it made it even more difficult for me to like her. She wasn’t terrible but definitely not someone I connected with.
Ambrosia: Ambrosia seemed TOTALLY forced into this book. I think if we did without her character “guiding” the Furies and molding them, it would have been way more interesting, actually. I would have liked to see the girls figure the powers out for themselves, realize they all needed to be together, experiment in their own ways… Ambrosia’s influence and presence in the book was just way too convenient and totally unnatural for my tastes.
Raymond: I actually really liked Raymond! He was funny, outgoing, and the one character who had a real personality. If the story went a different way, it would have been so much fun to read about him but sadly he was put on the back burner through most of the book.

Pass.

I just couldn’t get into this one and… I sadly just wouldn’t recommend it.

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