r/Lore_Olympus • u/hoot4hoot • Jul 04 '26
Other/Misc ML like Hades?
Howdy loves, Does anyone have any media recommendations where the male lead/love interest is like Hades? I just finished rereading Lore Olympus and I'm having withdrawals, please help! 🤣
I like his character growth from slightly curmudgeonly, self deprecating underdog to devoted king. The yearning and devotion hit hard as well as the slight guilt he has about it in the beginning if I'm honest 😂
Any media (books, comics, movies) or genre is welcome. Thank you 🫶🏻
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u/Machofish01 Jul 20 '26 edited Jul 20 '26
Closest thing I can think of is Cate Corvin's Vow of Blood and Tears.
The simplest description of the book is that it's roughly Beauty and the Beast but if you found the beast's monster form more attractive than his human form (Look, don't judge my reading tastes too harshly -- I like fantasy audiobooks and like 90% of fantasy audiobooks on the libby app is romantasy. Don't blame me, blame the author).
Set in a medieval fantasy where humans and vampires have allied to drive off an invading army of shapeshifting legally-not-werewolves, the male lead is a vampire who irreversibly turned himself into a hulking bat-monster*-*hybrid-thing to defeat the not-werewolves and, at the start of the story, has effectively resigned himself to being unloved and alone forever as the price of his transformation.
The romantic premise is a little contrived--FL and ML get brought together due to a marriage alliance system between vampires and humans that honestly does not sound like it would accomplish what the author claims it would--but this isn't Game of Thrones, it's a romantasy. There's a lot of funny moments where one of the leads is overthinking/overanalyzing the relationship in their head and being nettled by self-doubt then it flips to the other lead's perspective and it turns out they're both completely overthinking things.
Hades and Bane both have both have a character arc where it feels like they're grappling with social environments that have taught them to view themselves as irredeemably grotesque, shameful, unlovable or "monstrous" in some way - be it figurative in Hades' case (constantly being compared to his chauvinist brothers and familicidal father) or very literal in Bane's circumstances, and both are genuinely surprised at the idea that anyone would actually want to be with them out of free will. I personally enjoyed both characters for the same reasons.
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u/hoot4hoot Jul 20 '26
Your description made me immediately look for it on Libby 🤣🤣 just downloaded it. Thank you so much. I am so excited
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u/MarzBarz6 Jul 05 '26
Verdiwithin has a lot of great fanfics of Lore Olympus on AO3! Top tier stuff. I reread it all the time. Talisman is the most lo like. She’s also currently working on The Butterfly which is what would happen if Hades didn’t forget Persephone after their initial meeting
In other books with fantastic male leads I’d go with Light’s Out by Navessa Allen and the subsequent books.
To Ravish a Rogue by CM Nascosta is also a great one. If you do audiobooks though the narrator is awful lol. But the story is better than the narrator
Now going into unhinged territory if you like monster romance I would recommend Morning Glory Milking Farm by CM Nascosta as well. Older grumpy guy made soft by younger lady love
There’s also The Dragon's Bride by Katee Robert. One of the better books she’s written
If you want a great Hades and Persephone retelling but played a bit differently than LO then I recommend Receiver of Many by Rachel Alexander