the part that’s crazy is that she states that “mythology has bypassed YA” even though she claims reading a lot to “keep on top of market trends.

Achilles and Patroclus are quite famous, and Zeus and Ganymede, but lesbian and queer women relationships were not really ‘allowed. Just because the ‘centuries old, immortal being x 18 year old’ trope is sapphic does not mean I find it any less flip flopping annoying and off-putting.Thank you to HarperCollins Children’s Books/HarperTeen and NetGalley for providing an ARC copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This is set years later, when the full truth of what happened has been forgotten and all that’s left is suffering. Why would Poseidon set up such a convoluted plot to have princes murdered when he could just demand the lives of the princes outright? He was so sure of what he thought he knew, he was still grieving but at the same time he had a chance to fall in love. She obtained her MEng in Computational Bioengineering at Imperial College, London, and has recently graduated with an MPhil in Population Health Sciences from the University of Cambridge.

This led to the replacement of the Delian League (essentially a Greece centered around the leadership of Athens) with a period known as Spartan Hegemony, lasting until the 3rd century BCE. I always love a Greek retelling, and I liked that this was something a bit different - it was less a retelling, more a loosely linked sequel, taking a small feature from the very end of the Odyssey and turning it into a story of its own. One thing I was very pleased about was the ending – I thought it might end all happily, but it didn’t, and I liked that. I’m sorry but if you can’t be bothered to read the source material you plan to pay homage to (or blatantly rip-off) then I can’t be bothered to read your book. The prophecy and curse, the seeking out the solution but I didn't like how they kept going around it over and over again without actually doing anything about it.It's not just beautifully written, it's FUN—which isn't a word I usually associate with greek tragedies, but here we are. I don’t care that it’s “sapphic” and queerness shouldn’t be used as a shield against legitimate criticism. Why show Leto learning about her new powers when you could just give us a two paragraph training montage and have her master them?

Almost as soon Leto is on Ithaca she "falls" for the prince, blushing, flirting, her heart racing, finding kind and sweet and kissing him in various occasions. it’s almost like Underwood doesn’t actually know anything about the cultural context of the time period! She’s also often portrayed as blameless when it comes to the maids, and I think, ‘if she’s really that clever and manipulative, could she not have found a way out? That’s like watching the Disney movie and saying you know the original story of The Little Mermaid or Mulan.But when Leto awakens from her death on the shore of a long-forgotten island, its enigmatic keeper Melantho tells her that there’s only one way the curse can be broken. Seeing white Anglophones publishing their “refinements” of foreign myths (Greek in this case, another example would be Ancient Chinese myths), and so many white academics occupying African American sections on bookshelves, upsets and demotivates me dreadfully. Leto walks past a tapestry depicting Achilles’ death and yes, it does show him being shot with an arrow in the heel. Poly stories and cheating plots aren't a sin, naturally, but if you're gonna brag about how you're bringing diversity to the genre and not mention at all that the male/female romance is the more important one, I really really don't see where the confidence comes from.