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A review by lyall_reads
Lies We Sing to the Sea by Sarah Underwood
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
1.5
1.5/5, rounding up because it’s objectively better quality than most things I rate 1 star.
Because I love reading about vicious, complicated sapphics and I hate review-bombing, I gave this book the benefit of the doubt only to end up angrier at it than I have been at any book for a while. I was with it for about the first third, but when they got to Ithaca, everything imploded.
I won’t blame the book for the poor marketing- I knew going in it was not an Odyssey retelling, despite the marketing. I also knew it wasn’t going to be well-researched going in but was fully ready to just treat it as a Greek-inspired fantasy world; as long as the world feels cohesive and fantastical, I can let go of a lot. Underwood, however, made the baffling choice to both under-research AND tie the story to a clear time period. There’s reference to the Peloponnesian war and I am no scholar of Ancient Greece (I was more of a Rome-obsessed kid) but even I remember from seventh grade history that Athens was a democracy at that time. There’s so many weird little things like that which add up. I don’t think it was a good move to tie the world of the story to actual history; it would have been much better to have had less time have passed since the Odyssey and tie it more closely to the mythic world.
The biggest problem: I didn’t like Leto. It’s okay to not like every character in a book, but I felt like I was meant to like her and I just didn’t get it. She’s impulsive, bloodthirsty at strange moments while refusing violence in others when peoples’ lives depend on her, and she’s a cheater. I grew to hate her as I saw how she treated Melantho. There’s a world where she talks things through with her and there’s some ethical non-monogamy or more run-of-the-mill love triangle stuff where she’s not with either of them, but nope. No communication allowed! There are people like Leto out there, who act selfishly and chose to view actions taken with men as not cheating on the femmes they’ve made a commitment to- I’ve even been in a relationship with one of them!- but they are not fun to read about as what I think was meant to be a likeable main character. I’m all for letting queer character be messy (that was my favorite part of Love Lies Bleeding!) but there wasn’t a strong enough bedrock of character underneath Leto’s off-putting decisions. She ended up feeling more like the ‘cheating bisexual’ archetype than a fleshed-out flawed person, and I hate that.
I did like Melantho, but as soon as she meets Matthias, she becomes off-puttingly jealous and possessive. We, the readers, know Leto is thinking about cheating on her constantly, but Melantho doesn’t yet. Without the insight we have into Leto’s thoughts, it doesn’t make sense for her to immediately view the man she and Leto ARE PLOTTING TO MURDER primarily as a romantic rival. She’s right, but she couldn’t know that yet so her actions felt out of character and like a writing mistake more than anything else.
This book also hits my pet-peeve- all women besides the main character (and in this case, the love interest) are either dead or evil. We have the dead, good women who shaped Melantho, Matthias, and Leto: Ophelia, Thalia, Selene, Timo; and we have the evil women: the queen, Olympia, the romantic rival. We also get some child girl characters, but it seems if they’re not Melantho or Leto and reach adulthood, a woman becomes either evil or dead and I HATE that.
Pros: the audiobook narrators were great! I liked Underwood’s writing style quite a bit and found it to be very readable. There’s a few fun, claws-out, wlw moments. Melantho and Mathias have a nice bonding moment I appreciated.
TLDR; don’t read this. Read the Penelopiad for a feminist angle on the Odyssey and the story of the maids’ murder. Read The Midnight Girls or An Education in Malice for YA/NA fantasy with feral sapphics.
Because I love reading about vicious, complicated sapphics and I hate review-bombing, I gave this book the benefit of the doubt only to end up angrier at it than I have been at any book for a while. I was with it for about the first third, but when they got to Ithaca, everything imploded.
I won’t blame the book for the poor marketing- I knew going in it was not an Odyssey retelling, despite the marketing. I also knew it wasn’t going to be well-researched going in but was fully ready to just treat it as a Greek-inspired fantasy world; as long as the world feels cohesive and fantastical, I can let go of a lot. Underwood, however, made the baffling choice to both under-research AND tie the story to a clear time period. There’s reference to the Peloponnesian war and I am no scholar of Ancient Greece (I was more of a Rome-obsessed kid) but even I remember from seventh grade history that Athens was a democracy at that time. There’s so many weird little things like that which add up. I don’t think it was a good move to tie the world of the story to actual history; it would have been much better to have had less time have passed since the Odyssey and tie it more closely to the mythic world.
The biggest problem: I didn’t like Leto. It’s okay to not like every character in a book, but I felt like I was meant to like her and I just didn’t get it. She’s impulsive, bloodthirsty at strange moments while refusing violence in others when peoples’ lives depend on her, and she’s a cheater. I grew to hate her as I saw how she treated Melantho. There’s a world where she talks things through with her and there’s some ethical non-monogamy or more run-of-the-mill love triangle stuff where she’s not with either of them, but nope. No communication allowed! There are people like Leto out there, who act selfishly and chose to view actions taken with men as not cheating on the femmes they’ve made a commitment to- I’ve even been in a relationship with one of them!- but they are not fun to read about as what I think was meant to be a likeable main character. I’m all for letting queer character be messy (that was my favorite part of Love Lies Bleeding!) but there wasn’t a strong enough bedrock of character underneath Leto’s off-putting decisions. She ended up feeling more like the ‘cheating bisexual’ archetype than a fleshed-out flawed person, and I hate that.
I did like Melantho, but as soon as she meets Matthias, she becomes off-puttingly jealous and possessive. We, the readers, know Leto is thinking about cheating on her constantly, but Melantho doesn’t yet. Without the insight we have into Leto’s thoughts, it doesn’t make sense for her to immediately view the man she and Leto ARE PLOTTING TO MURDER primarily as a romantic rival. She’s right, but she couldn’t know that yet so her actions felt out of character and like a writing mistake more than anything else.
This book also hits my pet-peeve- all women besides the main character (and in this case, the love interest) are either dead or evil. We have the dead, good women who shaped Melantho, Matthias, and Leto: Ophelia, Thalia, Selene, Timo; and we have the evil women: the queen, Olympia, the romantic rival. We also get some child girl characters, but it seems if they’re not Melantho or Leto and reach adulthood, a woman becomes either evil or dead and I HATE that.
Pros: the audiobook narrators were great! I liked Underwood’s writing style quite a bit and found it to be very readable. There’s a few fun, claws-out, wlw moments. Melantho and Mathias have a nice bonding moment I appreciated.
TLDR; don’t read this. Read the Penelopiad for a feminist angle on the Odyssey and the story of the maids’ murder. Read The Midnight Girls or An Education in Malice for YA/NA fantasy with feral sapphics.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death, Rape, and Death of parent