German: Die unsterbliche Braut, trans. Freya Gehrke, Hamburg: Mira, 2012.

Prequels:

• Aimée Carter, The Goddess Test, 2011.

Sequels:

• Aimée Carter, The Goddess Hunt – A Goddess Test Novella 2012.
• Aimée Carter, The Goddess Legacy – A Goddess Test Novella, 2012.
• Aimée Carter, The Goddess Inheritance, 2013.

In this second volume of the Goddess Test trilogy Kate and Henry, the god of the underworld, are a couple. During spring and summer she is allowed to live in the upper world. Because of her attempt to kill Kate in the first volume, Hera is punished and banished to Tartarus, the most terrible part of the underworld. After having finished her visit to earth, Kate goes again down to the underworld accompanied by Hermes. Back at the mansion of Hades, the marriage ceremony takes place and Kate is crowned as the new empress of the underworld. But the crowning is interrupted by the Titan Cronus, who emerges as a monstrous fog and abducts the Hades-figure Henry. Then, Kate herself goes to Tartarus, where Cronus is imprisoned - his spirit is able to leave the prison for short periods of time; he used this power to abduct Henry. Kate manages to save Henry by telling Cronus that she would be on his side. Cronus nearly escapes from his prison, because the door to his cell has been opened. After all this, Kate and Henry continue with their ceremony, after which they spend their wedding night together. Soon after that, Hera and Aphrodite reveal, that Henry fell in love with Kate because Aphrodite enchanted him. The two goddesses kidnap Kate, who already carries Henry’s child, in order to rob her of the baby after the birth.

Before the wedding, Kate tells the Pantheon that she will remain chaste until Henry marries her. After Kate heroically rescues Henry from Tartarus, they are reunited in a legitimate manner and their lawful wedding night results in a pregnancy. This turn of events could be interpreted as an approval for conservative views on sexuality and its legitimization by marriage. The negative portrayal of Aphrodite who engineers love and sexual desire at a whim and creates conflict, remains at odds with the requirements of passing the goddess test which includes all Christian virtues. Generally speaking, ideology underlying the narrative suggests superiority of stricter moral rules over the lax morals of the Olympian gods. Positive characters in the novel may stumble when their free will is under enchantments, but they improve as soon as the spells are lifted. Teenage romance as a genre may include various excesses, including moral ones, to make the narrative more intense and absorbing. Yet, such behaviour is perceived as obviously wrong and never left without a proper comment and consequence.

According to the ancient myth, Cronus is thrown into the Tartarus. In the novel, he is occasionally able to return to the surface, as a foggy and horrible creature substantial enough to kidnap people – a demonic figure from a horror movie, straight out of the cult classic movie The Fog (Carpenter 1980) or its remake (Wainwright 2005) which the author may have seen.

Stierstorfer, Michael, Antike Mythologie in der Kinder- und Jugendliteratur der Gegenwart. Unsterbliche Götter- und Heldengeschichten? [Ancient Mythology in Contemporary Children’s Literature. Immortal Stories of Gods and Heroes?], Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2017, 128 pp.

Zinn, Laura, "Camp Half Blood, Mount Olympus Academy & Co. – Die Inszenierung der Schule in Mythenadaptionen des 21. Jahrhunderts", Markus Janka, Michael Stierstorfer, eds., Verjüngte Antike. Griechisch-römische Mythologie und Historie in zeitgenössischen Kinder- und Jugendmedien, Heidelberg: Winter, 2017, 99–115.

Zinn, Laura and Otmar Kampert, "Lehren, Lernen und die neu-imaginierte Antike des 21. Jahrhunderts", Der Altsprachliche Unterricht. Latein Griechisch 1. (2017): 24–35.