Gods Behaving Badly

Read Time: 4 Minutes

I picked up Gods Behaving Badly partly because I remembered reading it ages ago, either on my Kindle or in a paperback that probably ended up in a charity shop. The memory was foggy enough that most of the plot had dissolved into the same place I store old phone numbers.

I figured it would be fun to revisit it in audio, and it turns out my brain had wiped far more of it than I realised. That actually worked in my favour. It felt like coming back to a story that still had my fingerprints on it, just not the details.

The premise still shines. A whole Greek pantheon living in a rundown London flat has a scruffy charm to it. Their powers are fading as belief dries up, and everyone is stuck improvising modern jobs. Artemis walks other people’s dogs. Aphrodite works a phone sex line. Ares is trying to poke countries into new conflicts. Apollo is busy pursuing anything that moves, and when he gets rejected, he solves the problem by turning the poor soul into a tree. It is petty, chaotic, and very on brand for the gods.

Aphrodite might be the funniest of the lot. Hearing her working at a phone sex line while casually sabotaging lives out of boredom gave me a warm little glow of schadenfreude.

Ares is off trying to convince countries to go to war again, which feels exactly like the sort of hobby he would pick up if he had too much free time. Then there is Eros who has found religion in the modern world, which he leans into with a sort of earnest awkwardness that I found unexpectedly charming.

On the mortal end we get Alice and Neil, who work at a TV station. Alice is a cleaner who seems to spend as much time managing Neil’s hopeful crush as she does mopping floors. Their friendship is gentle, a little awkward, and a good grounding point for the wider chaos. Them sneaking into Apollo’s TV psychic debut felt sweet in that low stakes way where you know they are just looking for a moment outside their routine.

The underworld section was the part I had completely forgotten, which made it the most interesting part of this reread. The way they get there, travelling on an underground train with Hermes and Charon, has a sort of grim commuter logic that fits the book’s tone. The afterlife itself works on memory and will, which is an idea the book only touches lightly but left me thinking longer than I expected.

As for the audio, Glen McCready gives a solid, steady performance. Nothing flashy, nothing grating, just a comfortable middle ground. My only real issue was the similarity of character voices. In scenes with only one or two people speaking it works fine. Once half the pantheon is arguing, the distinctions blur and I had to replay a couple of moments to confirm who was talking. It is not a major flaw, but it is noticeable in a story with this many characters.

The production has a small quirk worth mentioning. The chapter announcements do not line up with the app’s chapter markers. The audio might say chapter twenty while the app insists we are still in chapter seven. It makes quick navigation a bit messy if you are trying to skip to a specific point. Listening straight through mostly sidesteps the issue.

Returning to this story after so long was a good call. The humour still worked for me, though the pacing wanders here and there. A few scenes spend more time than they need to, and others skim over ideas I would have happily explored. Even so, there is a warmth to watching these fading gods trying to hold onto relevance while two ordinary people stumble into their mess.

If you want something playful that mixes mythology with everyday drudgery, this lands in that sweet spot. Just be ready to keep track of who is talking when the divine family starts arguing. The gods may be fading, but they still have strong opinions and no interest in speaking one at a time.

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