Booksbooksbooksbooks

I don't know if anyone's¹ noticed, but I haven't mentioned books for awhile now (is that two words or one? Must remember to check later...). Part of that is because this isn't intended to be a bookcentric blog (I have a librarything account for that), and I know that reading about books you haven't actually read really isn't all that interesting. Also, I really just haven't felt a deep urge to talk about anything in the books I've been reading.
Well, I just finished the second book in the Avatars series by Tui T. Sutherland, and I feel compelled to talk about it, as well as the first one, because even though both of these books are rereads², I was still caught off guard by some of the twists and turns in them.
For those who are unfamiliar with the series, they are centered around four main teenagers, Gus, Venus, Kali, and Tigre. These teenagers are all going about their daily business one day, when something happens, and suddenly, they're alone, deserted. It's the end of the world.
(Here's where things start to get mildly spoiler-y)
Each of the four is inexplicably told to go towards New York by voices in their heads, with the exception of Gus. The three have various issues and adventures as they try to make it to their destination, but by the end, they're all in New York. There they meet a fifth teenager, named Amon (you sensing a theme here yet?) They find out that they are each an avatar of a god from various pantheons and religions - Greco-Roman, Mesoamerican, etc. - who brought about the end of the world so that they could rebuild anew. The avatars must fight so that one religion emerges victorious. They will rule the renewed world.
That's the synopsis of the first book at least. The second one expands on it, of course.
Anyway though, my Important Thoughts that I needed to share:
1. I thought it was kind of cool how Sutherland drops in the whole "end of the world in 2012" thing. One of the gods is asked why they chose four days before Christmas to set their plan into motion³, he says December 21, 2012 was a date of special significance to the Mesoamericans, and nobody else cared.
2. Also cool how Sutherland drops hints that the 2012 the avatars were in was slightly different from ours - at one point cloning is brought up, and Kali mentions that there were a huge number of laws against it.
3. Africa going into darkness because the gods there took back control was kind of cool, but also sort of terrifying, and I'm really glad we get to explore it more with this third book.
4. Probably my favorite image in the second book: Thor trying to protect Miracle from the rain. Super cute.

That's about it...onto the third book now!

¹ There I go again, pretending like people reading these...
² Because the third book came out, you see, to complete the trilogy, and I always like to read the previous books when that happens, as a sort of refresher.
³ A little bit more info - when everything had disappeared for the teens, what really happened was they moved forward 75 years into the future.