Neon Gods

Neon Gods is the first novel of Katee Robert's Dark Olympus series, published in 2021 by Sourcebooks Casablanca. It is a modern Hades and Persephone retelling in which the gods of Olympus are titles held by the members of thirteen ruling houses in a city built on the ruins of an older myth, where the positions of the gods are administrative offices rather than divine births.

Persephone Dimitriou has spent years being useful to the Thirteen Houses, and one evening her mother announces that she is to marry Zeus, the most dangerous figure in the city. Rather than accept it, Persephone crosses the river into the undercity and makes a bargain with a man she had always assumed was a myth. Hades has kept out of Olympus politics for years, and the arrival of Zeus's intended gives him a way back in and a reason to take an interest in the city's future.

The arrangement suits them both: Persephone needs protection and distance from her mother's plans, and Hades needs leverage over the city's order. It stops being convenient once the two of them are no longer performing for anyone, which is the part neither of them planned. Robert writes the couple's negotiations alongside the power struggle, so the romance and the politics are the same argument, and neither can be settled without the other.

The series continues with other couples drawn from the same pantheon, each volume taking a different pair of titles, and this first book establishes the river, the houses and the modern city of Olympus. It is a fantasy romance intended for adult readers rather than a young adult retelling, and it assumes no knowledge of the other books in the series.