Marie Phillips does for the Gods of the Greek pantheon what Neil Gaiman did for the Norse ones in American Gods. She has written the best fantasy screwball comedy since Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams died. In Gods behaving badly she borrows the same idea from Pratchett as Gaiman does -- that Gods obtain their power from mortals' belief in them. And since hardly anyone takes Zeus and company seriously anymore, that means very little power indeed. So little that they have to live together in a run-down house in a suburb of London. As they suffer through their low-powered existence, day after tedious day in modern times, two very ordinary and unremarkable mortals find themselves drawn into a practical joke that one God plays on another, leading to a series of events that quickly spiral out of control, putting our very existence in jeopardy. But not to worry -- it's all hilarious.
(Just so you know: if this book were a movie, it would receive an "R" rating if not an NC17. These are the Gods of the Greek pantheon after all).
