Callie, a Classics major, flees home to protect her family from a monster straight out of mythology. Visions lead her to Nectar and Ambrosia: the weirdest pub on Earth, where inter-dimensional travelers with attention seeking issues get drunk in between the A-list celebrity lives they create. They can't pretend to be gods anymore—not since a treaty with the current Supreme Deity promising they won't intervene in human affairs.The Doorkeeper of this threshold, Florian, rides herd on the rowdy Amaranthine and offers her shelter and a job. Callie likes the lonely, mysterious bartender more than she should. For Florian, her presence is a ray of light in the gray monotony of his sentence behind the bar, but he keeps a cautious distance—the truth of how he became Doorkeeper could change Callie's perception of him forever.
When angels show up for a war council over Zeus's irrational mutters about a comeback, Callie has uncontrolled visions of an apocalypse. Ex-gods realize she’s the first Oracle Priestess in generations. All Callie wanted was keep her parents safe, and now it seems she must sacrifice her future to keep the rest of humanity safe, too. Ambrosia could be the key to harnessing her visions— or it could cost her life.
War is coming. The threshold between worlds has never been more fragile. Callie must discover who is pulling Zeus's strings and avert the final battle—before the immortal vying to become the next Supreme Deity kills her first.
Goodreads/Amazon
Nectar and Ambrosia starts out pretty simply for urban fantasy. Callie, our protagonist, is fleeing home to protect her family from a monster that only she can hear or see. Pushed onward by her intuition, she finds a help wanted sign in the window of a building that looks abandoned.
"If you can read this, find the door."When she stumbles through the door in terror, she realizes that she has found sanctuary, at least for the time being. The proprietor immediately gives her the job and a place to stay. There's more going on than she realizes though, and she will quickly see that it's quite another world inside.
Not only do characters from Greek mythology take the stage, so do many other pantheons: Egyptian, Norse, Irish, Hindu, English, etc. All the folklore and mythologies make their way through Nectar and Ambrosia. While it's mainly the Greek ex-gods making trouble, it was fun to see all of them portrayed as they stopped in for a drink. Witty dialogue and one-liners abound. Hamill did a fantastic job of converting them to modern day and making them more relatable.
While Callie, as a Classics major, should have been a bit more knowledgeable about some of the occurrences, she jumped right into this new world without a whole lot of fanfare. It was fun to see her interact with the other characters and I enjoyed watching her puzzle things out and eventually, come into her own. The plot was fast moving and never had any downtime, even if it was slightly predictable. The world building of the bar itself was entertaining and interesting, but the true strength of Nectar and Ambrosia was the portrayal of the different mythologies.
If you are a fan of classic mythology and urban fantasy, you'll get a big kick out of this book. With such great characters and a fast-moving plot, it's definitely worth a read! Right now, it's available on Amazon for 99 cents!
E.M. (Elisabeth) Hamill writes adult science fiction and fantasy somewhere in the wilds of eastern suburban Kansas. A nurse by day, wordsmith by night, she is happy to give her geeky imagination free reign and has sworn never to grow up and get boring.
Frequently under the influence of caffeinated beverages, she also writes as Elisabeth Hamill for young adult readers in fantasy with the award-winning Songmaker series.
Other upcoming works as E.M. Hamill include NECTAR AND AMBROSIA, an adult urban mythic fantasy coming early 2018. She lives in eastern Kansas with her family, where they fend off flying monkey attacks and prep for the zombie apocalypse. Her short story, "Burnout" was featured in Empyreome Magazine's Flash Fiction in March 2017.