Rise of Gods (The Paternus Trilogy, #1)

by Dyrk Ashton

To pass the time, he peruses the frieze relief sculptures on the walls that would normally be seen on the outside of such a temple. Asterion sculpted them millennia ago, with a little help from monk apprentices. Arges and Tanuki worked on a couple of them. The Bull put those in the darkest corner in the back. Tanuki can’t blame him. They aren’t very good. Though Arges still likes to grumble about it. Tanuki wanders in the gaslight and shadows to the shuffle of his bare feet, click of his toenail claws on slick stone, soft hiss of burning lamps and huffing flicker of flame. The friezes are wrought in the Greek style, but if an outsider were to consider them to be based on myth, they would observe there are figures represented from stories around the world. There is Zeus of the Greeks, but also the Roman god Jupiter. Then Romulus and Remus, but Abel and Cain as well. Odin and Thor, Shiva and Ganesh, Anubis and Sekhmet, captured forever in all their immortal glory. Titans, Giants, Aesir, Vanir, angels, demons, Deva, Asura, bhutas and ganas. A veritable who's who of the panoply of gods and demigods, and hundreds of lesser creatures of lore. Thunderbirds, spiders, snakes, bears, bats, dragons, centaurs and ape-men, in addition to trolls and dwarves, gremlins, goblins, ghouls, flying fiends of the sky and monsters of the deep blue sea reflect in Tanuki's gaze. Most prevalent are half-men/half-beasts of a staggering variety, including a dozen configurations of human/canine and hu...

The details are so fascinating that an info dump is as riveting as the action...