The characters still feel remote at the end of it, but the story and the language are deeply satisfying. She has a lot of vulnerability as well with her worries for her son Telemachus (who I personally did not gel with) and just all the things Odysseus has left her with. There is a lot of focus on her queenly appearance and relationship with her maid and women on Ithaca.

I enjoyed the narration right from the start and the overall tone of the novel, but in the first half, there were a lot of characters and different story threads to get a hold of. The groundwork laid for the sequels leaves relationships to be repaired and characters to face further growth. I was also fascinated by Hera’s love for Clytemnestra, Penelope’s cousin and queen of Mycenae and murderer of her own husband, King Agamemnon.It’s very much along the lines of if Themyscira was a secret society and Hippolyta, Wonder Woman and all the others were hiding their actions from the men.

Pour ceux qui suivent mes reviews vous vous êtes sans doute rendu compte que j’adore la guerre de Troie même si je suis à jamais du côté des Troyens. It would then only shift the narrative from the men to the gods, and not to the women that have already been unheard for so long. Similarly, I enjoyed the little glimpses we get of other Goddesses or looks into what they are up to. There are some pretty disturbing scenes throughout, none overly graphic, but they paint enough of a picture to understand what is going on and I couldn’t help but feel my blood boil reading these scenes.

this is a ground-up view of Greek myth populated by spying maids, crafty merchants, and conniving queens. Elektra with his brother Orestes land on Ithaca, tracking their guilty mother and wanting Clytemnestra's death. North has penned a beautiful character study, offering a nuanced take on feminism, power dynamics and the identity of mothers. I am the goddess of queens, wives and women; my tasks may be thankless, but I perform them nonetheless. She is also a character in her own right, seeking to aid Penelope’s cause as subtly as possible, without drawing the attention of any of the other gods.

I who have nothing to lose that the poets have not already taken from me, only I will tell you the truth. It shows the brutality of their existence and the lack of choice women had when forging ahead after abandonment or married to men they barely knew, expected to bow to every whim of their husbands, fathers, sons, and the patriarchy in general. But now that he has been absent, she faces a difficult choice – remarry to remain in power or likely be assassinated. The author chose to tell the story from the goddess Hera’s POV rather than Penelope – I think this was a big mistake, as it made the story feel divorced from Penelope’s emotions and feelings.As a first novel in a series it does make sense that it needs to establish the vast world first before going deeper and building strong relationships between main characters and readers.