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rowan_simon3 's review for:
Ariadne
by Jennifer Saint
where do i even start. i think first things first if reading abt suicide/somewhat grotesquely described sacrificial rites weirds you out/is not your thing, don’t bother picking this one up. the shift at the end is a dramatic and sudden one and it’s not worth it tbh.
the characters were basically the same i just couldn’t stand one of them. it started changing pov’s every few chapters like a fourth of the way in and there was no shift. they felt like the had the exact same inner monologues, one of them was just ridiculously whiney. i’m not sure if i was supposed to feel any amount of sympathy for her, but i certainly didn’t. for it being written in first person, they didn’t feel like two separate people, if that makes sense.
this book was trying SO HARD to be tragic. if she had just written the story it would’ve been tragic enough, but it seemed like she was trying to shove it in your face how tragic it was. there was no faith in the readers to discern the tragedy of it all. i think we were told at least once a chapter how horrible the gods are. we could’ve figured that one out organically. there was just no depth.
i’m not entirely sure what the goal of this is. it usually feels like when modern authors rewrite a greek myth (typically a tragic one) they have a reason. you HAVE to have a reason bc mythology is so saturated and already so rewritten there has to be a reason for yours to be different/worth reading. i just didn’t feel like this book had a purpose or a reason. at first i thought it was to tell ariadne’s story, take the story of the minotaur back and make it her story. but i don’t think it did that; i don’t think that was the purpose to begin with.
all that to say, yeah it did make me cry at the end.
the characters were basically the same i just couldn’t stand one of them. it started changing pov’s every few chapters like a fourth of the way in and there was no shift. they felt like the had the exact same inner monologues, one of them was just ridiculously whiney. i’m not sure if i was supposed to feel any amount of sympathy for her, but i certainly didn’t. for it being written in first person, they didn’t feel like two separate people, if that makes sense.
this book was trying SO HARD to be tragic. if she had just written the story it would’ve been tragic enough, but it seemed like she was trying to shove it in your face how tragic it was. there was no faith in the readers to discern the tragedy of it all. i think we were told at least once a chapter how horrible the gods are. we could’ve figured that one out organically. there was just no depth.
i’m not entirely sure what the goal of this is. it usually feels like when modern authors rewrite a greek myth (typically a tragic one) they have a reason. you HAVE to have a reason bc mythology is so saturated and already so rewritten there has to be a reason for yours to be different/worth reading. i just didn’t feel like this book had a purpose or a reason. at first i thought it was to tell ariadne’s story, take the story of the minotaur back and make it her story. but i don’t think it did that; i don’t think that was the purpose to begin with.
all that to say, yeah it did make me cry at the end.