Rhiannon
When you go into these reimaginings and retellings you really do have to let go of all that has come before in order to buy into the creative changes. And I’m all for it, because really? these old myths and legends are so old that viewing them from our distant 21st century lens means we really can’t know the specifics and quirks of relationships and how people felt and what happened, so these retellings always open the story back up in new and interesting ways.
In this case, the old obscure story of Melantho, a slave girl and minor character in the Odyssey who was essentially raised as a foster child by Penelope, is retold by realigning their relationship (and ages) into one of a romantic nature. Hewlett does a decent job of reconstructing the story in such a way that the bits we know of Melantho from the Odyssey believably take on new meaning with understandable motivations so that she doesn’t come off as quite the ‘betrayer’ she did in the old stories.
The relationship between Penelope and Melantho in this book is one of a long and drawn-out complex affair of master and slave dynamics and childhood friendship morphing into that of a forbidden love affair. Unfortunately, the emotional aspects of it (including the interactions between all the female characters, really) felt forced and flat and draggy and wasn’t very interesting for me. I found the smaller plot points and changes that Hewlett made to the story far more interesting to consider and much more engaging.
My thanks to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for the ARC. I am leaving this review voluntarily; all opinions are my own.
Originally posted at www.instagram.com.
When you go into these reimaginings and retellings you really do have to let go of all that has come before in order to buy into the creative changes. And I’m all for it, because really? these old myths and legends are so old that viewing them from our distant 21st century lens means we really can’t know the specifics and quirks of relationships and how people felt and what happened, so these retellings always open the story back up in new and interesting ways.
In this case, the old obscure story of Melantho, a slave girl and minor character in the Odyssey who was essentially raised as a foster child by Penelope, is retold by realigning their relationship (and ages) into one of a romantic nature. Hewlett does a decent job of reconstructing the story in such a way that the bits we know of Melantho from the Odyssey believably take on new meaning with understandable motivations so that she doesn’t come off as quite the ‘betrayer’ she did in the old stories.
The relationship between Penelope and Melantho in this book is one of a long and drawn-out complex affair of master and slave dynamics and childhood friendship morphing into that of a forbidden love affair. Unfortunately, the emotional aspects of it (including the interactions between all the female characters, really) felt forced and flat and draggy and wasn’t very interesting for me. I found the smaller plot points and changes that Hewlett made to the story far more interesting to consider and much more engaging.
My thanks to NetGalley and Sourcebooks Landmark for the ARC. I am leaving this review voluntarily; all opinions are my own.
Originally posted at www.instagram.com.