A review by laura_trap
Metamorphica by Zachary Mason

5.0

Greek myth, in some form, has lasted thousands of years and even now still holds an intense fascination. They really are seamless, timeless stories. Mason expertly crafted slightly new, subtle retellings of some of Ovid's famous tales, and at the heart of them all is transformation and change. The style is similar to vignette, all very short, brief, but impactful. I really enjoyed the imaginative yet subtle play within each of the stories, the gods present but also floating through each page, abstract and distant. The entire book is very prose like and in many ways hypnotic, like it would be easy to recite these tales around a fire in the black night, on a beach, returning from war, or starting out on a hunt. They seemed very polished, varnished in time because while many of these stories held an edge of the familiar, there was something new and different about them. Mason wrote for a modern writer, using very old stories, and I enjoyed that the most about the book. In some cases, such as Atalanta and Athena, he brushed off the antique patriarchy and added a new modern femininity to them. He didn't try to stuff the stories in a pigeon hole by relying too much on ancient traditions and themes. The themes were very much modern, dealing with desire, fear of death, wonder, love, and change in middle age. I also really enjoyed his characterization of some of the well known entities of ancient myth - Narcissus, Adonis, Tiresias, Death. Each story felt original, unique, but still familiar. I thoroughly enjoyed the book and would definitely pick this up to explore again.