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goosemixtapes 's review for:
Wrath Goddess Sing
by Maya Deane
book of the summer and century maybe. don't even bother with me; read the dathomira review, because dathomira already said it all. but of course i've got shit to say anyway, first and foremost that this book fucks HARD and if you like weird transsexual fiction you should read it whether you like the iliad or not.
some specific notes:
>this book is not a straightforward retelling. as the aforementioned linked review says:
a lot of details, timelines, and character relationships have changed, and yet emotionally, all the core important pieces are there. which to me, as a reader and writer of retelling narratives, is always going to make for a better retelling than something that's cookie-cutter plotwise the same. a lot of the basic plot of the iliad is treated by this book as only half the story, the petty mortal piece of a much larger fight unfolding between the gods--a fight that achilles, half-god herself, has access to where the other mortal soldiers don't; she knows it's not all about helen, at least not in the way everyone thinks. and this WORKS, because deane has the skills to pull it off. if i wanted to read the iliad, i'd read the iliad. but the iliad can't offer me this specific achilles, with all of her rage and trauma and adrenaline; it can't offer me her close friend meryapi, far and above my favorite side character, with her extensive knowledge of magic and sharp esnse of humor; it can't offer me the deadly homoerotics between achilles and helen, as two children of the gods with too much power and too much bloodlust. it also can't offer me a bisexual transgender threesome which this book did. thank you maya deane for everything
>THIS HELEN IS SO GOOD. THIS REPRESENTATION OF HELEN IS SO GOOD. THIS IS HOW YOU WRITE AN EVIL/ANTAGONISTIC HELEN. not “oooo she’s so pretty and EVIL she’s a SLUT she started a WAR FOR ATTENTION AND SLUTTERY” but “helen, like achilles, is a lot of god stuffed into a human body and how do you have a normal morality when you can bend the world to your will and sacrifices to you give you godly powers”
>i don't understand why people are saying there’s too much transphobia in this book? i mean yeah achilles has had a traumatic childhood growing up as a trans woman in ancient fucking greece + some slurs get thrown around in the first 100 pages. but once. look, if you want to read a book about trans people that has zero slurs in it, i think that's completely fair, and yeah, this isn't the one. but saying a book written by a trans woman that explores trans trauma has Too Much Ambient Transphobia is... weird lol
>MAJOR SPOILER CLICK AT YOUR OWN PERIL but i also really appreciate how this book handles
>absolutely hysterical that the inside cover says this book could be “for fans of the song of achilles.” i mean yeah obvious comp in terms of making the iliad explicitly gay but like. you gotta understand that if the song of achilles is tap water then wrath goddess sing is mcdonalds sprite. if TSOA is a pleasant but watery iced tea then this book is gasoline laced with crack
>on that note, achilles and patroclus are not involved here; they are cousins! which i think is another example of deane deliberately breaking away from the established… idea? of the iliad? by which i don’t mean solely the iliad itself, but also the larger mythos and ALSO the culture around that mythos. to refer to the iliad as having a “fandom culture” seems a little silly, but anyone on classics social media probably knows what i mean—there’s a specific online tumblr/twitter characterization of agamemnon, of odysseus, of achilles, of patroclus, of their relationship, of who in this story is in the right and who is an awful irredeemable shithead (as if everyone in the iliad is not an irredeemable shithead). this book completely takes its own road, and honestly, it's refreshing. i don't hate that established fandom idea of the iliad (well. i hate some parts of it), but i love to see an author do something entirely new. no achilles x patroclus (they’re cousins and dear to each other platonically; patroclus is married and achilles quickly becomes besties with his wife); agamemnon is a charismatic and compelling leader though not without his flaws (and achilles); odysseus is… well, odysseus is odysseus. said positively. as my friend said, “maya deane understands that odysseus did improv club.”
>this book also changes some of the generally accepted mythology of the gods, and i'll admit that threw me sometimes, if only because i couldn't tell why it was necessary. but it also didn't affect my enjoyment of the book, and it's worth considering that deane is extremely uninterested in "realism" and wants to write greek myth in all its messy contradictory complexity. which i respect
>i’m not sure entirely how i feel about the ending, because it’s pretty wild to the point of detaching from the rest of the established world, plot, and scope. but again see: realism, and it was compelling! it gripped me! i would much rather maya deane fuck around doing whatever she finds interesting and compelling than write something cookie-cutter. i will always prefer an ambitious book to an uneventful one, even if the wild ride jolts me a little. plus, like, let's be real, the iliad is wild in a way a lot of modern retellings/reimaginings don't interact with. homer's achilles' horse tells him he's going to die. let's get freakier around here
>did i mention there's a bisexual transgender threesome. this book whips ass
some specific notes:
>this book is not a straightforward retelling. as the aforementioned linked review says:
if you want an actual retelling of the iliad what i might suggest to you, dear reader, is to grab any number of pdfs of a translation and simply ctrl+f+replace the ‘he’ that follows a mention of achilles with ‘she’. wrath goddess sing is not that and it is all the more glorious for it.
a lot of details, timelines, and character relationships have changed, and yet emotionally, all the core important pieces are there. which to me, as a reader and writer of retelling narratives, is always going to make for a better retelling than something that's cookie-cutter plotwise the same. a lot of the basic plot of the iliad is treated by this book as only half the story, the petty mortal piece of a much larger fight unfolding between the gods--a fight that achilles, half-god herself, has access to where the other mortal soldiers don't; she knows it's not all about helen, at least not in the way everyone thinks. and this WORKS, because deane has the skills to pull it off. if i wanted to read the iliad, i'd read the iliad. but the iliad can't offer me this specific achilles, with all of her rage and trauma and adrenaline; it can't offer me her close friend meryapi, far and above my favorite side character, with her extensive knowledge of magic and sharp esnse of humor; it can't offer me the deadly homoerotics between achilles and helen, as two children of the gods with too much power and too much bloodlust. it also can't offer me a bisexual transgender threesome which this book did. thank you maya deane for everything
>THIS HELEN IS SO GOOD. THIS REPRESENTATION OF HELEN IS SO GOOD. THIS IS HOW YOU WRITE AN EVIL/ANTAGONISTIC HELEN. not “oooo she’s so pretty and EVIL she’s a SLUT she started a WAR FOR ATTENTION AND SLUTTERY” but “helen, like achilles, is a lot of god stuffed into a human body and how do you have a normal morality when you can bend the world to your will and sacrifices to you give you godly powers”
>i don't understand why people are saying there’s too much transphobia in this book? i mean yeah achilles has had a traumatic childhood growing up as a trans woman in ancient fucking greece + some slurs get thrown around in the first 100 pages. but once
Spoiler
her body changes, the army accepts her pretty fucking quickly, actually (i honestly wondered if they accepted her Too Quickly for the internal logic of just how transphobic most of them were, but 1. it is clear at this point that she is A Fucking God’s Child who you shouldn’t fuck around with, and 2. i’m not gonna fault deane for writing a trans woman power story)>MAJOR SPOILER CLICK AT YOUR OWN PERIL but i also really appreciate how this book handles
Spoiler
pregnancy. i'm simple. i love trans people. i love to see trans men who have been pregnant who are still unambiguously men. and god i fucking LOVE to see a trans woman get to give birth, even if the experience is fucking horrible, because it spits directly in the face of the idea that giving birth is the one ultimate designation of womanhood, one that trans woman, coincidentally, can never access. there's honestly a lot to talk about re: the gender politics of pregnancy in this book (eg. the treatment of childbirth as equivalent to a battlefield, and no less glorious/dangerous), but mostly i was just like "you fucking GO girl grow yourself a womb">absolutely hysterical that the inside cover says this book could be “for fans of the song of achilles.” i mean yeah obvious comp in terms of making the iliad explicitly gay but like. you gotta understand that if the song of achilles is tap water then wrath goddess sing is mcdonalds sprite. if TSOA is a pleasant but watery iced tea then this book is gasoline laced with crack
>on that note, achilles and patroclus are not involved here; they are cousins! which i think is another example of deane deliberately breaking away from the established… idea? of the iliad? by which i don’t mean solely the iliad itself, but also the larger mythos and ALSO the culture around that mythos. to refer to the iliad as having a “fandom culture” seems a little silly, but anyone on classics social media probably knows what i mean—there’s a specific online tumblr/twitter characterization of agamemnon, of odysseus, of achilles, of patroclus, of their relationship, of who in this story is in the right and who is an awful irredeemable shithead (as if everyone in the iliad is not an irredeemable shithead). this book completely takes its own road, and honestly, it's refreshing. i don't hate that established fandom idea of the iliad (well. i hate some parts of it), but i love to see an author do something entirely new. no achilles x patroclus (they’re cousins and dear to each other platonically; patroclus is married and achilles quickly becomes besties with his wife); agamemnon is a charismatic and compelling leader though not without his flaws (and achilles
Spoiler
DOMS HIM <3 this book is nuts>this book also changes some of the generally accepted mythology of the gods, and i'll admit that threw me sometimes, if only because i couldn't tell why it was necessary. but it also didn't affect my enjoyment of the book, and it's worth considering that deane is extremely uninterested in "realism" and wants to write greek myth in all its messy contradictory complexity. which i respect
>i’m not sure entirely how i feel about the ending, because it’s pretty wild to the point of detaching from the rest of the established world, plot, and scope. but again see: realism, and it was compelling! it gripped me! i would much rather maya deane fuck around doing whatever she finds interesting and compelling than write something cookie-cutter. i will always prefer an ambitious book to an uneventful one, even if the wild ride jolts me a little. plus, like, let's be real, the iliad is wild in a way a lot of modern retellings/reimaginings don't interact with. homer's achilles' horse tells him he's going to die. let's get freakier around here
>did i mention there's a bisexual transgender threesome. this book whips ass