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3.9 AVERAGE
3.9 AVERAGE
adventurous
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This one was a little disappointing and not as good as the first of these two Theseus books, which had its own problems.
The main issue I had was staying committed to her mythical Greece. It's half interesting and half too faithful to the idea of reconstructing this "pre-historical" period in Greece. Sometimes it really works where Theseus is working out the details of kingship or going pirating, other times it's just bland tropes.
The worst of the book was her take on the Hippolytus story. As I always say, if the reboot's story is worse than the original story, then they should have just used the original. While Renault is well-read, I don't agree with her sensibilities for this story. She writes in the afterword: "Euripides makes Phaedra hang herself, leaving a written charge against Hippolytos; a gesture persuasive enough, but rather large for so mean a purpose." This seems silly to me, because it is the very grandeur of the purpose that Euripides has Phaedra commit the deed-to say nothing of the symmetry of having the accuser silenced (in death) and the defendant silent (by oath), but I digress...In Renault's version, she has Phaedra live, fine enough, only for Theseus to return later after having killed his son and learned the truth and strangle her for her part-he recognizes her malicious intent-fabricating a suicide note that confesses. Well despite all that, my real issue is how the novel works with only Theseus' perspective. At the end of the day, he seems like an idiot saying no why on earth are my wife and son acting in such strange ways over the course of a year. Truly, one of the more difficult to engage elements was her faithfulness to the misogyny of her reconstructed mythical Greek world. But alongside all that were still some cool things that I won't go into.
Other notables: Pirithoos was fun. Chiron shows up and young Achilles. Much of the story concerns the Amazons, Hippolyta, and then later the horde of Amazon-led barbarians from Scythia. Menestheus (king of Athens in the Iliad) shows up to be a pageboy to Theseus who serves as a dark foil of the old blood-aristocratic kingship with only a feel for surface and reputation. And I suppose I will say Hippolytus the character was fashioned rather interestingly, up until the situation with Phaedra.
I think I woulda skipped this book if I knew what it was like. The 1st was really enough for me. But I decided to be a completionist about Renault since I liked her Socrates, Plato/that actor Nicomedes, and Simonides books. And now, having finished these two books, I can proceed to the Alexander the Great trilogy. Woo.
The main issue I had was staying committed to her mythical Greece. It's half interesting and half too faithful to the idea of reconstructing this "pre-historical" period in Greece. Sometimes it really works where Theseus is working out the details of kingship or going pirating, other times it's just bland tropes.
The worst of the book was her take on the Hippolytus story. As I always say, if the reboot's story is worse than the original story, then they should have just used the original. While Renault is well-read, I don't agree with her sensibilities for this story. She writes in the afterword: "Euripides makes Phaedra hang herself, leaving a written charge against Hippolytos; a gesture persuasive enough, but rather large for so mean a purpose." This seems silly to me, because it is the very grandeur of the purpose that Euripides has Phaedra commit the deed-to say nothing of the symmetry of having the accuser silenced (in death) and the defendant silent (by oath), but I digress...In Renault's version, she has Phaedra live, fine enough, only for Theseus to return later after having killed his son and learned the truth and strangle her for her part-he recognizes her malicious intent-fabricating a suicide note that confesses. Well despite all that, my real issue is how the novel works with only Theseus' perspective. At the end of the day, he seems like an idiot saying no why on earth are my wife and son acting in such strange ways over the course of a year. Truly, one of the more difficult to engage elements was her faithfulness to the misogyny of her reconstructed mythical Greek world. But alongside all that were still some cool things that I won't go into.
Other notables: Pirithoos was fun. Chiron shows up and young Achilles. Much of the story concerns the Amazons, Hippolyta, and then later the horde of Amazon-led barbarians from Scythia. Menestheus (king of Athens in the Iliad) shows up to be a pageboy to Theseus who serves as a dark foil of the old blood-aristocratic kingship with only a feel for surface and reputation. And I suppose I will say Hippolytus the character was fashioned rather interestingly, up until the situation with Phaedra.
I think I woulda skipped this book if I knew what it was like. The 1st was really enough for me. But I decided to be a completionist about Renault since I liked her Socrates, Plato/that actor Nicomedes, and Simonides books. And now, having finished these two books, I can proceed to the Alexander the Great trilogy. Woo.
Fantastic historical fiction! Very queer - normative. Very relatable. It's hard to believe it was written nearly 60 years ago. This goes to show how human we are, and how human we continue to be.
adventurous
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
i miss hippolytus he was genuinely such a nice guy :( I knew how this would end but I didn't want it to be like this.
adventurous
mysterious
reflective
sad
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
reflective
fast-paced
The sequel to The King Must Die, this book picks up almost exactly where the last book ends. It covers the rest of the legend of Theseus, combining the original legend with Renault's blend of imagination and historical research.
This is probably the weakest of Renault's books that I've read. The pacing of the book - cramming most of the life of one of Greece's most famous legendary heroes into less than 250 pages - means that Renault was always going to need a strong and clearly defined character in order to carry the book without it feeling rushed and uneven. Theseus never comes across to me as any of those things. In fact, he never even comes across to me as remotely likeable. There was a coldness and a remoteness to the character that I can't recall encountering when reading her Alexander trilogy, for instance. It's as if Renault was trying to create a real man from an archetypal hero, and got stalled halfway through the process.
Overall, she handled the conversion from myth to novel well, providing some plausible and fairly realistic expectations for parts of the legendary cycle. The rest of the historical aspect shall be passed over in silence by me, mostly because I can appreciate that at the time Renault was writing, much of what she was saying was still accepted as historical fact. (But it's not, it's really, really not! 'Shore People'! Matriarchal religion being replaced by the patriarchy! Mycenaeans in 1500BCE!) I was more than a little irked by her representation of some aspects of gender history/interaction. I can buy that, since this novel was from Theseus' viewpoint, - and he was a pretty typical example of a Bronze Age male raised in a patriarchal society - that he would have no problem in ascribing a woman's anger to the fact that it was her 'moon time.' I had much, much greater problems with the representation of Hippolyta; not that Theseus would think of her as he did, but that a woman who was supposedly raised as an independent and self-sufficient Amazon would have thought and acted as she did, and would have what seemed to me to be a high level of internalised misogyny. It made me very, very uneasy reading those sections.
I think I'll be re-reading the Alexander trilogy long before I pick this one up again. It's not a bad novel; it just didn't really do so much for me.
This is probably the weakest of Renault's books that I've read. The pacing of the book - cramming most of the life of one of Greece's most famous legendary heroes into less than 250 pages - means that Renault was always going to need a strong and clearly defined character in order to carry the book without it feeling rushed and uneven. Theseus never comes across to me as any of those things. In fact, he never even comes across to me as remotely likeable. There was a coldness and a remoteness to the character that I can't recall encountering when reading her Alexander trilogy, for instance. It's as if Renault was trying to create a real man from an archetypal hero, and got stalled halfway through the process.
Overall, she handled the conversion from myth to novel well, providing some plausible and fairly realistic expectations for parts of the legendary cycle. The rest of the historical aspect shall be passed over in silence by me, mostly because I can appreciate that at the time Renault was writing, much of what she was saying was still accepted as historical fact. (But it's not, it's really, really not! 'Shore People'! Matriarchal religion being replaced by the patriarchy! Mycenaeans in 1500BCE!) I was more than a little irked by her representation of some aspects of gender history/interaction. I can buy that, since this novel was from Theseus' viewpoint, - and he was a pretty typical example of a Bronze Age male raised in a patriarchal society - that he would have no problem in ascribing a woman's anger to the fact that it was her 'moon time.' I had much, much greater problems with the representation of Hippolyta; not that Theseus would think of her as he did, but that a woman who was supposedly raised as an independent and self-sufficient Amazon would have thought and acted as she did, and would have what seemed to me to be a high level of internalised misogyny. It made me very, very uneasy reading those sections.
I think I'll be re-reading the Alexander trilogy long before I pick this one up again. It's not a bad novel; it just didn't really do so much for me.
The pebble moves upon the mountain, shifted by a goat's foot or the scour of rain. For a while it tumbles and rolls, and a child's hand could stop it. But soon it takes great bounds, swift as a slingshot; at last it leaps out from the crag like Apollo's arrow, and can pierce through a war-helm into the skull of a man.
i’m too tired of heroes with megalomania saving people who are fine
and negligence and description of women in all these stories just makes me sick
knowing that this book was also written by a woman, i cannot fathom why the hell she decided to change important plot lines but kept the idea of men superiority, of women’s ”job” to be petite, beautiful, obedient and so on… the author awfully sexualised and objectified female characters, kept scenes of basically assault and coercion
for what?….
please, read “Ariadne” instead
and negligence and description of women in all these stories just makes me sick
knowing that this book was also written by a woman, i cannot fathom why the hell she decided to change important plot lines but kept the idea of men superiority, of women’s ”job” to be petite, beautiful, obedient and so on… the author awfully sexualised and objectified female characters, kept scenes of basically assault and coercion
for what?….
please, read “Ariadne” instead