Gods and Goddesses: The Rise of Divine Mythologies

Marin covers the creation of gods through ancient ones to divine royalty and then goes around the world covering each of the major pantheons like Egyptian, Greek, China, Norse, Celtic, pre-Columbian America and West Africa. She also includes a discussion on Modern gods.

The chapters discuss different gods and goddesses from documented mythology, a retelling of a pertinent myth which are not necessarily well known. This includes a myth about a death goddess in Sumeria. Marin then pulls in other goddesses in similar roles. The writing is easy to read. Marin tells a good story and keeps the reader engaged and interested through the mythology. This means when she moves into the other gods and goddesses she holds the reader's interest.

In addition to relaying information on how gods and goddesses related through different culture Marin relates them to natural events. This is key because the ancient peoples were more in touch with the flow of nature. She relates the fallibility of the Greek gods to humanity evolving and learning to solve their own property. By making the link between the state of humanity and the divine the humanity worshiped, she illustrates the advances made by humanity. She does a good job of relating the era of humanity with the era of the gods and goddesses.

Marin provides charts of different deities in the pantheon she discusses. While not a complete list, it provides an overview of the majority of them. This is an overview of each of these pantheons. While she talks about a number of different gods and goddesses in each pantheon and provides a chart with common ones, she does not give an overall listing of all the gods and goddesses in each Pantheon.

At the end she provides a bibliography and reference guide which is several pages long and gives a number of books and other items to continue your study of gods and goddesses.

The quality of the book is nice it's got thicker pages and it's a nice hardcover. It's a nice book to add to your collection offering an overview of a variety of pantheons while relating to the state of humanity. This is an aesthetically pleasing book filled with easy to read information about the evolution of divinity over a millennium.

~review by Eileen Troemel

Author: Gabiann Marin
Rockpool Publishing, 2017
p. 170