Amazing retelling - rich and intense

Please continue !

Oooh I love your writing style! Itz so bful and seamless! Love it! Please continue! :*

Wow, out of all the Hades&Persephone fanfics out there, this is the first one that had Hades go to Demeter for permission first!

Love it!

Its a shame that this beautiful story has been left incomplete. Such a lovely tale did not deserve abandonment!

What a beautifully written tale! I just adore the slices of poetry and the characterisation.

Oh, please do update!

-Smaginn

wow this story is amazing! the best thing to behold! i love the myth of Hades and the amazing Persephone. My eyes hunger for more of ur beloved story...Epitaph Empress that is an interesting name u chose and i love it greatfully. Iteresting charaterizations well on Hades, and you do make his eyes sound EXTREMELY dreamy to look at if the Underworld was truely dark and grey and the only thing colorful was his eyes. But i hope u upload the new chapter soon, i look forward to it with a new found excitement.

Wow... that was so great

What a beautiful, engaging and passionate story. It's such a shame that you have not updated in years. I highly encourage and hope for you to do so in the near future. It isn't fair that a writer so talented as you, with a story so incredible as this, to just abandon it this way - unfinished and begging to be completed. If however you choose never to update again, know that you have written an impressive, ambitious and wonderful take on this myth and that you are the real deal.

I've read this story before, but wasn't sure how to review it. A clump at the end didn't seem fair to me (you seem to have put a large amount of time and effort into Epitaph Empress), but chapter-by-chapter feedback takes a while for work this long. However...

I am interested in seeing how you handle EE. Even though you haven't updated for a while, your style seems very improved in your later work. And you've got some mighty fine ideas in this piece-I'll pick into those as I go. First, Chapter I.

I like the way you characterize Hades. I really, really do. So many people make him an evil bastard, sex-god (literally :P), or sobbing wreck. Not so for you, Thyme! You've written him as he should be: creepy as hell, with reason. That you mentioned his resemblance to Zeus and Poseidon made me squeal like a fangirl inside. He is, after all their BROTHER! And he wasn't always King of the Dead. Nobody ever seems to remember that. Anyway, the resemblance and the fact that he should (oh for italics!) be attractive were great. Better still when you point out that he's not. He's terrifying, he's inhuman, he's otherworldly, and he is pitiless. As lord of the underworld, Hades can't afford to be anything else.

On the flip side, descriptions do go on a bit longer than they need to. Repetition (the word dark/darkness, for example) got a little overwhelming in spots. I'm unsure as whether that particular device was used on purpose or not, because there were areas where it flowed nicely too. Like "revealing the very soul of darkness. But dark and lonely." Totally awesome. It's only plus the previous "with the looming shadows of despair faintly hovering within DARK irises and candles of the eye," that it gets thrown off. Actually, this line helps with another point as well: sentence length. On the one hand, your imagery is spectacular. Eyes like candles? Brilliant! On the other hand, there are so many additional descriptions added in-in a single sentence, no less-that it becomes really hard to absorb anything. An inclusion of short, simple statements would help emphasize the strength of your similes. And metaphors. And other lovely literary terms. :)

...You know, I think I just realized something. Look at that whole sentence.

"They were graced with a thousand sharp blue shades, each one cold

almost to cruelty but with the looming shadows of despair faintly

hovering within dark irises and candles of the eye, revealing the

very soul of darkness."

Now "But dark and lonely," at the end it seems almost redundant. His despair has been mentioned already, so loneliness isn't much of a surprise at all. But clip the thought to "They were graced with a thousand sharp blue shades, each one cold almost to cruelty-revealing the very soul of darkness. But dark and lonely." and suddenly each phrase is made stronger through contrast. It loses the candle comparison, but the idea is gotten across much faster and with (in my opinion) more oomph.

Lets see...enjoyed seeing how dismissive Hades is of his own feelings, and how he looks at the "normal" behavior of his fellow deities. My last big crit is how his thought line connects to what he's doing. Musing is all well and good, but you mention that Hades has a harder job than anyone else. In this scene, he's sitting around brooding about how much he dislikes a situation he's been in for a very, very long time. And it sounds like he's been brooding about it frequently. While the subjects are all entirely valid (wife speculation, death situation, the conflict between the two), they seem to pop up almost at random. Maybe a result from something seen, heard, or done instead?

Okay, so before I close up this review I just want to show you something I adored unconditionally.

“Perhaps indeed he had a great heart, but it was not to be found.”

Oh. My. God. That was genius. Right there. GENIUS! It’s so tragic, and it foreshadows everything he does with Persephone perfectly. Hades has been totally crippled by his isolation, and…yes. You get that across amazingly.

‘Til next time,

Toccata

amazing

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE UPDATE! i love this story, please update!

came across this story and i love how u protrayed greek mythology with such depth to their thoughts and feelings. Do update as i realised the last update was 2003

Please update! I'm really enyoing this story and I want to know what happens. Will Persephone ever fall in love with Hades? How long will it take Demeter to remember that Hades was interested in Persephone?

I had to laugh at Aphrodite. Wonderful characterization!

I love your take on this myth- your story is full of extremes, which make for heavy going sometimes, but they really do suit the myth. I gather you haven't updated recently, but what you have here is a wonderful read, so I hope you haven't stopped updating completely. :")