Adriadne
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Review Score: 4 out of 5Where to Find: Amazon, Google Play,
Review |
Years ago, while still in college, I was required to read a little novel by Mary Renault called The King Must Die for my mythology class. The novel was written back in the 50s and despite both these books tackling the Theseus myth, one fully dives into the mythology, while one tried to justify it. The King Must Die was fascinating at the time only because of what the author tried to do to get around explaining the divine favor of the characters and tried to bring it into a more logical world.
Ariadne does not do this. It dives full into the Greek myth it drives from, however, as you can guess from the title, with Ariadne as the focus, not Theseus. For anyone that knows the myth of The Minotaur, they know where this story will go. It’s a Greek Tragedy after all, and thus as the book progressed, I doubted the author, Jennifer Saint, would flip the tables and give a happy ending.
When the story starts, we get a first person view of how the princess of Crete views the surrounding people, how she sees her family, and how the city talks about their shame. I really like the beginning of the book. Mostly because, while this is not necessarily new information, we haven’t seen the beginning of the Minotaur and how its birth affects Ariadne and her family. The author tried to give Ariadne a personality while not like a girl from the twenty-first century. Ariadne is very much a girl from her time period, which people might take issue with. Even several times through the novel, I was thinking about how this girl is being played, and how you shouldn’t fall in love with someone you just met. But I was in for the ride, and Ariadne learns very early on of her mistake as the Theseus and the Minotaur part of the myth only take up the first ten chapters.
I honestly thought the story would spend most time on Knossos as it was considered Ariadne’s shining moment, and yet I feel like The King Must Die did the princess a greater service in showing her cunning. Now, because that novel was more realistic, they couldn’t stick to the myth of an infinite labyrinth and instead made it similar to a slum city. But in the novel of her namesake, Ariadne doesn’t have much input other than the typical giving of the thread and placing Theseus’ weapon in the labyrinth.
Instead, we spend most of the time on the island of Naxos, after Theseus leaves her for dead. Why does he do this? Even after the novel, and the description of his character, I’m not sure. It was this act alone, and then lying about her death to everyone that paints him into a negative light. This part of the novel gathered my interest, since it diverted a bit from the cut and dry of the myth, but everything else proceeds as normal. Dionysus shows up to save her, eventually they marry and have many kids while she lives on the same island she was originally left to die on.
This novel might have been considerably shorter if we only followed Ariadne and her exploits, however there is one more character the author throws in about midway through the book. Ariadne’s sister, Phaedra. In the original myth, Phaedra is kinda just… there. When her sister apparently goes ‘mad’ in the myth and is left on the island of Naxos, Phaedra sails with Theseus to Athens and eventually marries him herself. It always felt like there was something to be said here. How could a sister just leave her family behind? How could she not feel like sloppy seconds to a man who chose Ariadne first? The author answers this by just omitting her from this part of the story. Instead, Phaedra is left behind on Knossos with the question of why she was told the wrong way to escape with her sister. Her brother forces her into a marriage with Theseus for a chance at peace. Phaedra’s personality by far is the stand out. She is not as fragile as her older sister and is more critical and cynical about people. Even she sees Theseus for what he is and knows he is lying about what happened to her sister.
I’d say this novel did Phaedra the dirtiest. By establishing her headstrong personality early on, I knew it would be quite problematic if the author was to follow the myth exactly. I was hoping the author would take some creative liberties and adjust her tragic fate to fit in line with the personality she had given her. However, the author stays bounded to the Greek tragedy, and towards the end of the novel, Phaedra does very out of character things to fit the love struck nature of her original counterpart.
Final Thoughts
This book is very true to the Greek Myth with a little personality flourishes here and there to add some spice. Overall, since I like mythology, I thought this was a serviceable book, but if anything, a little safe. I guess maybe I had been spoiled by The King Must Die to flip myths on their head. While I do like delving into the Greek gods, and having them appear in the novel, it can create problems like it did with this one. Where the godly grandiose took away from the titular character. Midway through, I found myself not caring about Ariadne and instead caring about what Dionysus was doing, unlike at the beginning where I sympathized with her and wanted to learn more about her. I feel like this novel dragged on for far too long. By trying to hit all the beats of the myth, there was a lot of time skipping, which got confusing. Even I was surprised by the end of the novel when Ariadne meets with Theseus and says it's been fifteen years. I think having written out time skips would help, but I thought it was fine. Nothing extraordinary, and nothing that shocked me to my core. I only wished that the author could have taken a risk to change the status quo.
Similar to all Greek Tragedies, there is no happy ending here.
Ariadne does not do this. It dives full into the Greek myth it drives from, however, as you can guess from the title, with Ariadne as the focus, not Theseus. For anyone that knows the myth of The Minotaur, they know where this story will go. It’s a Greek Tragedy after all, and thus as the book progressed, I doubted the author, Jennifer Saint, would flip the tables and give a happy ending.
When the story starts, we get a first person view of how the princess of Crete views the surrounding people, how she sees her family, and how the city talks about their shame. I really like the beginning of the book. Mostly because, while this is not necessarily new information, we haven’t seen the beginning of the Minotaur and how its birth affects Ariadne and her family. The author tried to give Ariadne a personality while not like a girl from the twenty-first century. Ariadne is very much a girl from her time period, which people might take issue with. Even several times through the novel, I was thinking about how this girl is being played, and how you shouldn’t fall in love with someone you just met. But I was in for the ride, and Ariadne learns very early on of her mistake as the Theseus and the Minotaur part of the myth only take up the first ten chapters.
I honestly thought the story would spend most time on Knossos as it was considered Ariadne’s shining moment, and yet I feel like The King Must Die did the princess a greater service in showing her cunning. Now, because that novel was more realistic, they couldn’t stick to the myth of an infinite labyrinth and instead made it similar to a slum city. But in the novel of her namesake, Ariadne doesn’t have much input other than the typical giving of the thread and placing Theseus’ weapon in the labyrinth.
Instead, we spend most of the time on the island of Naxos, after Theseus leaves her for dead. Why does he do this? Even after the novel, and the description of his character, I’m not sure. It was this act alone, and then lying about her death to everyone that paints him into a negative light. This part of the novel gathered my interest, since it diverted a bit from the cut and dry of the myth, but everything else proceeds as normal. Dionysus shows up to save her, eventually they marry and have many kids while she lives on the same island she was originally left to die on.
This novel might have been considerably shorter if we only followed Ariadne and her exploits, however there is one more character the author throws in about midway through the book. Ariadne’s sister, Phaedra. In the original myth, Phaedra is kinda just… there. When her sister apparently goes ‘mad’ in the myth and is left on the island of Naxos, Phaedra sails with Theseus to Athens and eventually marries him herself. It always felt like there was something to be said here. How could a sister just leave her family behind? How could she not feel like sloppy seconds to a man who chose Ariadne first? The author answers this by just omitting her from this part of the story. Instead, Phaedra is left behind on Knossos with the question of why she was told the wrong way to escape with her sister. Her brother forces her into a marriage with Theseus for a chance at peace. Phaedra’s personality by far is the stand out. She is not as fragile as her older sister and is more critical and cynical about people. Even she sees Theseus for what he is and knows he is lying about what happened to her sister.
I’d say this novel did Phaedra the dirtiest. By establishing her headstrong personality early on, I knew it would be quite problematic if the author was to follow the myth exactly. I was hoping the author would take some creative liberties and adjust her tragic fate to fit in line with the personality she had given her. However, the author stays bounded to the Greek tragedy, and towards the end of the novel, Phaedra does very out of character things to fit the love struck nature of her original counterpart.
Final Thoughts
This book is very true to the Greek Myth with a little personality flourishes here and there to add some spice. Overall, since I like mythology, I thought this was a serviceable book, but if anything, a little safe. I guess maybe I had been spoiled by The King Must Die to flip myths on their head. While I do like delving into the Greek gods, and having them appear in the novel, it can create problems like it did with this one. Where the godly grandiose took away from the titular character. Midway through, I found myself not caring about Ariadne and instead caring about what Dionysus was doing, unlike at the beginning where I sympathized with her and wanted to learn more about her. I feel like this novel dragged on for far too long. By trying to hit all the beats of the myth, there was a lot of time skipping, which got confusing. Even I was surprised by the end of the novel when Ariadne meets with Theseus and says it's been fifteen years. I think having written out time skips would help, but I thought it was fine. Nothing extraordinary, and nothing that shocked me to my core. I only wished that the author could have taken a risk to change the status quo.
Similar to all Greek Tragedies, there is no happy ending here.