3,5 ⭐

"What I did not know was that I had hit upon a truth of womanhood: however blameless a life we led, the passions and the greed of men could bring us to ruin, and there was nothing we could do."

This book was categorised as a "feminist Greek retelling" but I would argue it was a "female-centric Greek retelling" with no feminism poured into it. Sure, the women of the story (Ariadne, Phaedra and so many more) suffer the anger, the greed and the selfishness of the men and gods they encounter but there is no empowerment. Just pain and misery. Trophy wives, more betrayal and misery. And then they die.

I know perfectly well that the original source is, partially, to blame for the lack of compassion for these women but what's the point of a retelling if we just reread the same story we've read a hundred times before in myths, history and that we see in the news every day?

Ariadne is one of the most passive and boring characters I've read in a long time, she doesn't act at all. Even her giving the thread to Theseus is taken away from her and the glory falls on Daedalus who has the idea and gives her the thread... After that she just gets betrayed and used, by Theseus, becomes a passive content wife for Dionysus, mother of his children, and except for the last 50 pages, she doesn't take any initiative of her own, and that finishes with her death because of Dionysius' foolishness.

Phaedra could have been more interesting but I felt her incestuous 'madness' and death to be done very quickly, abruptly, with little consequence for the rest of the story and Ariadne.

Many chapters felt out of place, not advancing the plot, or worse: an enormous amount of telling. Most of Theseus' story, Dionysus', even at times Ariadne's felt like a Wikipedia page written from first point of view.

The prose was quite beautiful, which was my favourite part of the book, but besides that it was frustrating and almost boring. 😩