Subject: Have you ever run into...
Author:
Posted on: 2015-04-29 12:57:00 UTC
... James Lovegrove's 'Age of...'/Pantheon not-quite series? Bunch of books that are probably best classed as Military Science Fantasy, each on the theme of 'gods from a given mythology are active in the world today'. He started out with the Big Three, of course, but more recently he's done Voodoo, Hinduism, and of all things the Aztecs (plus a trio of shorts which includes 'Age of Anansi'. African spider-themed trickster god... yeah.
I've actually read all of them at this point, mostly for the worldbuilding; I can't vouch for the quality of the writing after first read, I'm afraid. But the setups are all different - some books the gods are real, others they're not, others it's ambiguous. Might interest you.
As for your Olokun idea, I like how well thought out it is. The main issue I take is that you've stuck with the 'child of' theme from PJO. So why's that an issue? Comparative religion, of course! ^^
The Greek myths are all about close relatives. Zeus defeats his father, his wife squabbles with him, his illegitimate children beat things up. So the Greek Riordan books are about children of the gods.
The Romans as a society were obsessed with lineages. The emperors claimed descent from Venus, and actually, a large portion of their social structure was based around 'was one of your ancestors one of the first senators?'. So the Riordan Romans break up the direct families, and expand out to include descendants of other demigods.
Egyption mythology doesn't really have 'children of the gods', but has a lot of magical rituals, and the idea of the Pharoah being a god. So the Riordan Egyptians have... well, you get the picture.
Does the Yoruba mythology have a focus on children of the gods? The impression I get is 'probably not'. I don't know what they do have as the primary theme tying gods to humans, but that's what you'd want to focus on for your 'Nawlins Waif and the Gods of the Yoruba' story, not copying from the Greeks. And if you did that, it could be a very interesting read (hey, you probably don't even have to change the story you've hashed out - which, in case I didn't say, sounds very interesting).
(Also, what does this imply Riordan's going to do with the Norse? Heck if I know. The Norse gods were basically the weather: human interactions with them were limited to 'go party with them when you die' and 'stay out of their way'.)
hS
((PS: Egyptians aren't white people. ^~))