I wanted no Trojan soldier to take what was mine; no glory-seeking warrior to seize his chance of fame by plunging his sword into Agamemnon’s heart Let him come back, I hissed into the empty sky. And once we get to the "action", it's over in two sentences and then the book keeps droning on and on and on for far too long yet again.

I’m so very excited for Atalanta, mostly because my girl needs a lot more stories than what she has. I was not impressed by the writing and as another reviewer put it, it was “a mile wide and two feet deep”. Life is rarely kind to the women in Greek tragedies as they live in fear of either the whims of the gods or of men.Where women being shrugged off as crazy or emotional by men leads to the downfall of an entire city. How could it be possible to rise every morning to that same grim, relentless slaughter, and then drink and sleep and wake to do it all again? Many of her actions and motivations might not feel justified but she is her father’s daughter and is unapologetic in her quest to avenge her father’s death and willing to sacrifice and bear the consequences of her actions.

Especially considering that this was a (feminist) retelling, it was aggravating to read that the girl first didn't acknowledge that her mother was using a man / boy to get revenge for Agamemnon's crime (as if only men could do that), while making excuses for her father despite him having killed her older sister, only to then turn on her mother for not seeing that everyone must be doing everything to please the gods (effectively not caring about her supposedly beloved sister) and plotting to murder Clytemnestra to avenge Agamemnon. None of the women's stories were a disappointment, and therefore, none of the chapters became boring. If you’re desperate to read every single book written about the Trojan War, then absolutely read Elektra. We learn of Helen's marriage to Menelaus and why she chose him; of Clytemnestra's marriage to Agamemnon and her giving birth to all their children; of Elektra's childhood; of Cassandra's curse and why she received it from the god Apollo.A few description of the weather, the palace pillars, palace floors, maybe people around them, and tada, scene's done. I know Saint's just following the original text, but my GOD does Elektra get exhausting after a while. While I didn't know much of the stories of Elektra, Clytemnestra, and Cassandra before reading, I was able to catch on easily to their roles. Clytemnestra and Elektra’s stories are inextricably entwined, but Cassandra is an outlier; she’s present in Troy during the fighting, which is presumably why Saint included her—Clytemnestra and Elektra are too far removed from the main action—but she doesn’t feel like an organic part of the story. The author is brilliant in her portrayal of the strong emotions and complexities in these women- Clytemnestra’s rage and agony, Cassandra’s innocence, despair and frustration and Elektra’s loyalty, anger and desire for revenge.

I felt there wasn’t enough new material built into the story, so it felt like a ‘telling’ rather than ‘retelling’ of a story I was already very familiar with. Circetells the story of the witch that Odysseus meets on his journey home, so it is more Odyssey than Iliad, but it is still very much worth reading.

In Jennifer Saint’s prose you can hear the songs of the poets, feel the floors beneath your feet, smell the wood burning in the fire and experience the story of these three very different women as if you are there. It was competent enough, and as I was reading it, at least through the halfway point, I kept thinking it was OKAY, assiduously so, but something was bothering me. Ariadne is her first novel, Elektra is her second, and Atalanta is her latest mesmerising mythological retelling.