House of Odysseus has absolutely blown me away. I read Ithaca last year and thoroughly enjoyed it but I felt like it suffered from two things: slow pacing and a disconnect from the main characters of the story. This time I find the characters most developed and fascinating, truth to be told, CN' Helen is the one that for so long I was looking forward to finding her in a retelling, Helen I always imagined in my mind, well down! Richly poetic . . . This is an impassioned plea for the lost, disenfranchised queens of ancient Greece, a love letter to the silenced women of history’ Booklist

There’s a tone and flavor to the writing style that is so smart and clever and witty. It both left me laughing out loud and also slowing down to reread passages that were emotionally beautiful.We women of sky and fire, we goddesses, we are so mighty, and yet if we learn anything from old mother Hera, it is that the brighter we blaze, the more the men line up to make us fall. Our power will be suppressed, subdued, and we will be turned from creatures of immortal majesty to cowering wives and simpering whores, adjuncts merely to a story told by a man. A story about a man.” If you liked the political maneuvering in the Game of Thrones series; if you chafe at the way that Greek mythology couldn’t pass even a modified a Bechdel test; if the inner lives of women are interesting to you; if you love a “good for her” story with an denoument that feels absolutely earned and yet somehow still in some ways surprising; I recommend this book whole heartedly.

Three goddesses there were who bathed in the waters of Mount Ida as Paris leered upon us, Zeus at his side. Three Furies there are who spin above the tent of Orestes. Three queens there were in Greece – one beloved of Hera, who killed her husband and died. One who is wed to the beloved of Athena, whose husband even now sets forth in his little rough-hewn boat again. And one who is mine, and whose name will live for as long as there is love, for as long as hearts beat throughout eternity." Penelope was the main star of the show but the author highlighted the women who were wronged, the women who outsmarted the men, and the women who bested men in a fight. Whilst I liked Penelope in the story of Ithaca, I fell completely and irrevocably in love with her in House of Odysseus. My Queen! This second volume of Claire North's Song of Penelope is at least as good as the first. I've been a fan since The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, but here her writing has matured to something extraordinary; poetic, earthy, profound, funny. Throughout, as some of Penelope’s suitors hatch a nasty plot, as a young woman is murdered, as ships are set alight, as a daring escape is made, and as Spartan soldiers are defeated, those awful creatures, the Furies hang over Orestes, exacerbating the effects of whatever mortal poison ails him. Cranky old Laertes gets a decent role in this instalment, with some splendid dialogue, and Kenamon the Egyptian also shows his worth.Penelope knows this will lead to nothing but trouble, since destruction follows Orestes wherever he may go. His uncle, Menelaus, King of Sparta, hungers for his chance of seizing his throne. I know, I know, I also was among others who didn't enjoy the first book, as much as it deserved, but House of Odysseus filled all the previous weak points, I really liked this one!