A review by trinityb2021
Babylonia by Costanza Casati

3.0

3 ⭐️

This book is all over the place in terms of quality. The best parts are amazing. They are emotional and gave me chills. The weakest parts are dreadfully boring and dragged on.

I think this book would’ve benefitted from a little bit of a faster pace (especially towards the end). It got really slow and I felt like nothing was really happening for chapters at a time.

I think that Semiramis is a great main character for one of these mythological “feminist retellings”. I am obsessed with this genre and I will never get tired of them. This book tried to do something a little different in the genre and had multiple POVs. At first I thought it was working, but overall I think it hurt the story more than helped it. I feel it should’ve focused solely on Semiramis’ story. Often times (this story being no exception) the characters are all morally gray and I think leaving the butterfly effect caused by these horrendous decisions hidden from the reader helps with the story. It forces us to consider and imagine the worst instead of literally see the bad things happening. Our imaginations are usually worse than the reality.

I enjoyed the first half a lot. The last half was more a struggle but I thought the writing was consistently great throughout. Very poetic. Very quotable. Very good imagery.

I know that Casati is a very talented author and I am still eager to see what else she releases in the future.

Disclaimer: I got an eARC of the audiobook through netgalley. Thanks to NetGalley and RBMedia for the advanced copy!