Lore

Alexandra Bracken

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2021

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.

Download PDF

Part 2, Chapters 19-21Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 2: “Carrying Fire”

Part 2, Chapter 19 Summary

The Odysseides still keep the house where Lore last lived with them. A bus sits in front of the house with a tent erected between the building and the bus’s door. The Odysseides are either moving something or evacuating. Castor uses his godly power to open the door of the building next to the Odysseides hall, and the group climbs stairs until they have a view of the Odysseide roof. They find an access door guarded by three cloaked figures. Van uses a drone to shoot tranquilizer darts at the guards. While Castor and Athena open the door, Lore and Van bind the guards, finding each with “A tattoo of the Kadmides’ mark” on his arm (171).

Van and Lore take the guard’s earpieces and join Castor and Athena at the open trapdoor. It overlooks the main room of the building from behind a glass dome. Below, Kadmides raid the building. The Odysseides are bound, and at the center of it all, Wrath stands with “his hand around Heartkeeper’s throat” (172).

Part 2, Chapter 20 Summary

Wrath’s voice comes through the earpieces. If Heartkeeper tells him how to open the Odysseides’s impenetrable vault, he will “allow those men who kneel to me to live” (173). Though Heartkeeper is gagged and badly beaten, he refuses. When no one gives Wrath the information he seeks, he orders Heartkeeper’s daughter, Iro, to come forward and for the Odysseides to be killed if she doesn’t reveal herself. One of the Odysseides tells Wrath that Iro is in the vault, and Lore remembers the vault has a second entrance. The group goes to search for it.

Part 2, Chapter 21 Summary

The second entrance is in an abandoned shoe-repair shop. While Lore and Athena break in, Castor waits on the roof of the Odysseides building and Van boards the bus to gain information and hopefully rescue the prisoners. The four keep in touch via a three-way call. In the shop, Lore and Athena head down into a tunnel, where cell service cuts out, as does the earpiece’s signal. At the other end of the tunnel, they find the door to the vault, and the earpiece comes back on in time for Lore to hear that Van got away with the bus.

Athena breaks into the vault, but Iro isn’t inside. She opens the door on the other side and stands, bruised and bloody, facing Wrath. Above, Castor unleashes his power as planned. The glass dome shatters, raining down destruction, and lines of power break off to fry Kadmides, “crackling and writhing across the ground like lightning scoring the land” (180). Lore and Athena charge into the melee, but Wrath is gone. Athena knocks a distraught Iro unconscious. Lore carries the girl back into the vault but stops when she feels “a pressure at the base of her neck” (182). She turns to see Wrath striding toward her, and she goes still, paralyzed by his power. Athena breaks her paralysis by throwing a spear at Wrath. It misses, and Lore seals the vault closed.

Part 2, Chapters 19-21 Analysis

During the Agon, the gods maintain their powers. It is never explained why, but it may be assumed that it is to give the gods a fighting chance—one god against dozens of hunters. The keeping of power also implies that magic isn’t dependent on immortality. Different powers also work in different ways. In Chapter 21, Wrath gags Heartkeeper to keep him from using his speech power. When Athena’s deception comes to light, Lore notes how she was affected by Athena’s powers of persuasion, but Castor remained unaffected, never truly trusting the goddess. This implies powers that require talking may not work on gods and that Wrath likely gags Heartkeeper to protect the mortal Kadmides. This may have to do with mental makeup. Though the gods’ bodies are mortal, they still have the minds of immortals. Thus, powers that wouldn’t affect them as immortals also don’t affect them during the Agon.

The original lineup of Greek gods included gender bias. Aphrodite (goddess of love) was female, as was Athena (goddess of wisdom)—characteristics traditionally associated with women. Artemis was a goddess of the hunt and battle, but as such, she had to stay a maiden and give up the traditional female role of mother and caretaker. By contrast, the most powerful gods (Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon) were men, as was Ares (god of war).

Get access to this full Study Guide and much more!

8,800+ In-Depth Study Guides
4,700+ Quick-Read Plot Summaries
Downloadable PDFs

Bracken uses these gender stereotypes to build upon the sexism in the Agon’s world and comment on modern-day inequality. Aphrodite was reborn as a man. Based on how the Agon views women, it seems female gods should be considered less desirable to hunt, but Aphrodite was killed, same as any male god, and the Odysseides honor Heartkeeper, regardless of the god’s original gender. Tidebringer is a woman who took the place of the original Poseidon. Rather than honored, she is shunned by all but her bloodline (the Perseides), showing the hunters are fine with a male taking over a goddess’s persona but not with a woman killing a god who was originally male. Despite the hunter’s feelings, a god’s gender does not affect their power, which means the gender bias is man-made and not influenced by the gods.