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aegeansails's review against another edition
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
1.0
oh, i wanted to love this book, i really did. while i adore a good retelling, this is not that. the prose is delightful, but that is where the positives for me end. i almost abandoned it less than 100 pages in but powered through and oh my gods, at best, it is a frankensteined out-of-time abomination.
to start, beginning a story about a greek god of love/desire by saying the greeks only have three words for love is something that immediately sent up red flags. i knew with that one sentence this telling was going to be a rough one.
also, not every feminist retelling has to change the protagonist into a warrior to make the story work. the psyche of this version feels whiney and entitled, and her ‘heroic deeds’ feel arbitrary and convenient more than anything else. they in no way feel crucial to the progress of the story at any time. zenobia neil’s psyche unbound, a retelling of the same myth, is much more in line with what the original spirit of the story was. you can retell something without bastardizing it entirely.
also, not every feminist retelling has to change the protagonist into a warrior to make the story work. the psyche of this version feels whiney and entitled, and her ‘heroic deeds’ feel arbitrary and convenient more than anything else. they in no way feel crucial to the progress of the story at any time. zenobia neil’s psyche unbound, a retelling of the same myth, is much more in line with what the original spirit of the story was. you can retell something without bastardizing it entirely.
moreover, it’s inconsistent: at points the author denotes psyche’s lineage as “mortal-born, on both sides”, and at others indicates she is the granddaughter of a god. additionally, the timelines are all over the place. this feels like one of the campy episodes of xena with every possible historical or mythological figure making at least one appearance - psyche and atalanta (who’s own backstory in this is a combination of at least three different myths) and agamennon and clytemnestra and iphigenia and helen and penelope and odysseus (and why call him odd, absolutely not) and meneleaus and achilles and patroclus, oh my! and medusa, why? there was literally no point to her being there other than as a ‘how-many-mythical-characters-can-i-fit-in-this-story’ name drop.
it feels like the author plucked psyche out of time and just dropped her in an era they thought would make for an interesting - however incomplete - b-story, but it just feels messy and out of place. even when the story is about psyche and eros directly, it is more about politics and the trojan war than anything else. aphrodite’s tasks don’t even come up until 3/4 of the way through the book.
just wrong mythology in general. in mythology, psyche is the youngest of three sisters. in this, she is the late in life only child of a, for lack of a better term, “non-canon”, made for this story brother of agamemnon. helen was clytemnestra’s sister, not penelope’s. the derisive way clytemnestra is portrayed is just inaccurate and unnecessary. also establishes three children - orestes, iphigenia, and elektra - for clytemnestra and agamemnon, but less than ten pages later claims agamemnon only has two. they had at least five together.
while i understand this story isn’t about them, the butchering of the entire atreus mythos is painful. adding another brother to the progeny of atreus just to make psyche the princess of the mycenean kingdom instead of agamemnon and his clan to justify the whole base of the story is wild. clytemnestra a sour-faced loom wife who lives in the dark windowless women’s quarters and whose motto is “silence is a woman’s greatest adornment” - sorry, have you even met her? this isn’t even the same person.
furthermore, the oracle’s prophecy is reworked to fit the warrior narrative of this piece. in this, the prophecy is portrayed as “you will slay a monster that even the gods fear”, whereas originally it was “marry a beast even the gods fear”. she was still taken to the rock spire, but instead of being prepared for sacrifice, psyche dresses herself in armor and expects to slay a beast before being swept away by the west winds.
while i respect the time and effort put into any story, it was an overall disappointing retelling that very much feels like someone threw a list of their favorite mythological characters into chat gpt and ran with whatever ai generated mess popped out.
Content Warnings
Minor: Suicide attempt and Suicide
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