Review by Frank Plowright

Right from the beginning Rachel Smythe’s art on Lore Olympus has impressed with its life and polish, which is especially notable considering it’s also coping with the Webtoons format for mobile phones. Volume Five begins, though, with the ambitious storytelling of the characters only shown in toned silhouettes.

It features Minthe, possibly the only god shown to date who regrets their manipulative behaviour. Her friend Thetis certainly doesn’t, and in the midst of Minthe’s misery Thetis sets up problems to play out later.

After the emotional intensity of Volume Four, Smythe pulls back to embarrassments and misunderstandings over the first third here. There are amusing conversations, elegantly contrived situations and attractive illustrations before a dip back into disturbing territory. If there was any doubt of Apollo being the series’ primary villain, that’s hammered home.

When Lore Olympus was originally serialised online, the end of Episode 115 was designated as the first season finale, and it certainly drops one hell of a bombshell concerning Persephone’s past. It’s something carried out in a teenage rage and which she now deeply regrets, but it’s also an incident that’s going to make readers fundamentally concerned about who she is deep down. It’s brilliantly delivered for maximum impact and occurred just before a gap in the original online serialisation.

The impact isn’t as great here when the page is turned and the story picks up again immediately. However, if there’s any thought that running the season ending midway through would lead to a dip, you’d be wrong, and there’s a considerable change. Persephone and Hades have so far carried most of the story, and it’s been a rare scene not featuring either of them. Now, though, Persephone is missing, meaning several other characters take up the slack, and we learn more about them. Some good, and some really, really bad. Persephone’s absence is temporarily solved with another jaw-droppingly audacious piece of plotting, leading to a buttock-clenchingly awkward scene. However, it opens up some great possibilities in the short term, only exploited for the single chapter here, and leads to some touching scenes with Hades.

Yet another great cliffhanger ending finishes the fifth volume of a series that started well and keeps getting better. You’ll want to head straight for Volume Six.