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adrianacheerios's review against another edition
adventurous
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
hackedbyawriter's review
4.0
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.
orphiq's review against another edition
adventurous
mysterious
reflective
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
siria's review against another edition
2.0
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.
jonmhansen's review against another edition
4.0
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.
1smarieokay's review against another edition
2.5
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
beth_jwilliams's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
redheadorganist's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Blood, Death, and War
Moderate: Murder, Rape, Sexual content, Suicide, Fire/Fire injury, Sexual violence, and Alcohol
kavinay's review against another edition
4.0
Renault has this great knack for casually skewering Theseus with his own presumptions of kingly privilege and judgement that you consistently feel sorry for those in his orbit, rather than fall into what a lesser author would render as a straight up heroic power fantasy.