Awakening

I’ll admit, I side-eyed *Awakening* at first. Another ‘chosen one’ trope? But Smith flips the script by making Christina’s ‘awakening’ less about destiny and more about the existential horror of realizing the gods are just as messy as we are. The opening act—where Christina literally faceplants into Olympus—sets the tone: chaotic, a little clumsy, and darkly funny. Rowlands’ narration is a masterclass in tonal whiplash; she makes Christina’s internal monologue (equal parts self-loathing and reluctant awe) feel like your own thoughts, while the gods’ voices drips with smug condescension. Her Hermès sounds like a trust-fund kid who’s never heard ‘no,’ and it’s *perfect*. That said, the middle act drags slightly when the plot gets bogged down in mythic bureaucracy (turns out, divine paperwork is as tedious as the mortal kind). And while the magical realism is inventive, a few metaphors—like Christina’s ‘thread of fate’ manifesting as a literal ball of yarn—lean *too* hard into the cutesy. But the finale sticks the landing with a twist that’s both heartbreaking and darkly pragmatic. The production is crisp, though I’d have loved more atmospheric sound design to heighten the surreal moments (imagine the clatter of a coffee cup hitting marble floors in Hades’ Starbucks knockoff). For fans of *The House in the Cerulean Sea*’s warmth or *Piranesia*’s weirdness, this is a sharper, more cynical cousin—less about wonder, more about the cost of it.