Welcome

"More than a study of myth, it is an exploration of power, identity, perspective, and the human need to find meaning in stories."

I guess

That's as far as the sample went

So there's now another book where a sculptor goes looking for Medusa

With ai generated image on the cover

"• The priesthood detail that belongs entirely to Rome, not to Athens"

You were so close...

"The story of Medusa as a celibate priestess in Athena's temple is, again, Ovid's contribution, not an inherited Greek tradition. In his version, she serves the virgin goddess under a strict vow,"

It will get dumber

"In Ovid's account, Poseidon assaults the priestess inside Athena's own temple, and the goddess responds not by punishing her brother but by transforming the victim."

It shouldn't be possible, but that's not the only time a book calls Poseidon the brother instead of uncle of Athena

"Long before Perseus struck her down, Medusa was a guardian, a serpent-crowned goddess who turned away evil and watched over thresholds. Patriarchal myth recast her as the monstrous feminine – beautiful, cursed, and vilified for her own rape."

Yeah sure...

The existence of a second book already bothered me, now I discover it's a trilogy 🫩

That's one of the laziest designs of Triton I've ever seen

@sarafangirlart @galusandmalus @aliciavance4228

I reached the dreaded 3 digits mark 😐

"While the police scramble to catch a phantom serial killer, a group of sisters knows the terrifying truth. They are racing to find her before the trail goes cold, but they are being hunted. Standing in their way is Athena—an Olympic-level combatant, a peerless polymath, and a woman as lethal as she is beautiful. As the sisters navigate the intersection of ancient mythology and modern forensics, they must unravel the dark, centuries-old secret behind the Gaze of Slate—a narrative twisted for millennia to hide the truth about who, and what, the world actually fears."

Yeah sure whatever

All this talk and the book only has 21 pages

"She was the Ebony Queen, moving with a feline, "I already won" energy that made every other model in the room look like a ghost. Her skin was hitting different under the high-def spotlights—it was a deep, flawless mahogany, polished to a radiant glow that looked like silk and midnight had a baby. Her complexion was so perfect it looked like it had been carved by a god, yet it pulsed with a warmth that was pure, vibrant life."

The fact that the book glazes her to such extent right from the start 🫩

"Porter O. Sterling (Poseidon) stood at the VIP bar, his gold-medalist shoulders barely contained by a custom suit. He was used to being the apex predator, but as he watched Medusa, his glass stayed halfway to his lips. He didn't want a business partner; he wanted the trophy the whole world was bowing to."

My god... 🙄

"She missed the daily calls to her sisters, Stheno and Euryale."

The bar is set so low that I'm impressed to see the other two gorgons as good sisters

"They called her the most beautiful girl in Greece, and men sailed across the sea just to watch her hair move like water."

Terrible start

"For readers of Lore Olympus, A Touch of Darkness, and morally-grey, villain-era Greek retellings"

It got worse 🫩

You know how generic this will be

"There were men, grown men, men with ships and wives and reputations, who crossed the sea to see a girl's hair move like water in the sun. [...]But they came on the days I was known to walk to the well, and they stood in the square, and they waited. When I came through they went quiet the way a hall goes quiet,"

Is there anything to say about this that wasn't said in another review?

"My sisters were beautiful too. I should say that, because the world has decided to make me the only one and it's not true and the truth is part of the story."

Well this is a retelling, which means nothing in these pages should be called truth

"He took the most beautiful girl in Greece and made her into something hard and cold and unable to look away, and the world thought it was the most wonderful thing in the world.

I was the only one, later, who ever did the same thing and was hated for it. The same act. A different veredict because of who did it."

Oh shut up!

The sculptor that made a statue based on you, with your consent, didn't hurt or killed anyone in the process. Your petrifying gaze kills people, it's not the same act, stop trying to put on this pathetic defense argument

"Linos cannot be turned to stone, for he has already stood at the edge of his own death and survived the sight of himself. He has not come to kill her, and he has not come to cure her. He has come to do the one thing no one has done in three hundred years.

He has come to look at her—and to stay."

Ok then 😐

To put Bible quotes in such a retelling bothers me, but I don't know how to explain why

At first I was worried that this Linos would be a one-note love interest but since he's sixty-one years old, that's unlikely

"The goatherd had died, Linos understood, in the middle of seeing himself. Not her. Himself. And whatever he had seen, in the last soft half-second before the marble took him, he had not been able to live in the same world as it."

"He had lifted his face to her on purpose, the way a man lifts his face to a priest, and Linos stood over him a long time in the bone-colored light and understood that this one had come across the dead coast not to kill the Gorgon but to be killed by her, because somewhere out in the breathing world he had done a thing he could not carry and could not set down, and he had heard, as everyone eventually hears, that there was a woman at the edge of the world whose eyes would show a man the truth of himself and let him stop."

What a ridiculous way to absolve Medusa of petrifying dozens. And it's worse because that's not the only book that basically supports using Medusa as a method of assisted suic*de

"They had made her into the only confessor left who could not refuse you, and so the broken came to her to die, and she gave them what they asked, and the world counted the bodies and called her a monster for them."

I feel like this character Linos would unironically support the canadian MAiD program.

"I'd like to look at you when I can do it as a man looks at a person. Not as a man looks at a reason."

Wow I'm so moved /s 😑

It exist

"Instead, she got bitten by something ancient in an enchanted garden — and now her hair moves on it's own, her temper turns things to stone,"

So she has the power origins story of Peter Parker?

Circe: are we fighting or flirting?

Odysseus: I'm pointing a sword to your neck

Circe: it's still unclear to me

I swear, that's how their encounter went:

"ARIADNE always knew what her destiny was: to be the perfect princess, obedient and prepared for an advantageous marriage. But her days in the palace of Crete are marked by loneliness and the weight of a secret: the Minotaur, her brother, a prisoner condemned by his own existence. While everyone sees him as a monster, Ariadne sees in him a lost soul, as caged as she is."

Oh god... 🤦‍♂️

I fear this writer ignored that Ariadne has sisters

Come on woman! Dionysus doesn't even look like the same guy!

Using ai generated image to avoid paying artists 😠

I don't like this design for Dionysus

"He say he's a God—Dionysus in retirement—that there's something about me, and that he will not give up until he has me."

Yeah sure whatever

Ai generated image on the cover

The sample goes up until chapter 1

"He does not take shape as a ruler who commands from above or a figure who establishes new systems to replace the old ones."

What? That's exactly what he does in the Bacchae

Nick Norman is describing Zeus divine form as if it's a meteor impact

"I gave joy to the grieving, frenzy to the chained, theatre to the voiceless, and madness to those who mistook cruelty for order."

He wasn't really such benevolent figure

Just noticed that in the cover it looks like Dionysus has 6 fingers in one hand

The sample goes until chapter 2

"Men love small names for large terrors. They hold a cup in their hands, taste sweetness on their tongues, feel their knees soften and their mouths loosen, and they think they have understood me."

"You know the story because priests enjoy telling it with clean hands."

First page and we already have the whining about how "men like to lie about me"

For anyone who's finding my account for the first time, that's the standart for the books of Infinia Worlds Press

"As though Semele was foolish for wanting certainty from a god who had already taken her body, her trust, and her future.

As though a mortal woman should be grateful for mystery if the mystery has divine hands.

As though love that must stay hidden deserves to be called love at all."

Oh, shut up!! You're not that much better! 😠

Ovid, Metamorphoses 6. 125 ff (trans. Melville) (Roman epic C1st B.C. to C1st A.D.) :"Liber [Dionysos] with bunches of false grapes deceived [and seduced] Erigone."

"Do not imagine him only as thunder.

That is another convenience of poets. They make him vast so they do not have to make him intimate."

It's impossible to please you

"There are people who say she was destroyed by Zeus' glory because mortals cannot bear divinity. They say it as if that explains anything. As if maming the law excuses the cruelty of it."

No matter how much you complain, Semele was a fool for the specific proof she required

"Out of the burning chamber, out of the body that had been my first world, out of the woman whose name would become a cautionary tale told men who never had to pay for Zeus' desire."

I just know this "writer" won't touch the tragedies of Aura amd Nicaea because it shows Dionysus doing bad things

"But he did not place my mother's name on Olympus and demand that every god bow before it."

That's a ridiculous expectation. It would never happen

"Listen to how easily people turn a woman's death into a lesson for other women."

That's not always a bad thing, and disasters were always used as example of what one shouldn't do or what to do to avoid worsening the damage

Breaking News! While searching for this book again, discovered that the "writer" removed it

"She has become something far more dangerous: a witness no god, king, court, or lover is allowed to own."

This is so tiring...

"Their forbidden love has survived gods, vampires, dryads, blood courts, broken vows, and the terrible cost of choosing each other in a world that keeps turning desire into claim."

So Daphne is dating the former priest. Why? I don't know, I rather have another foot surgery than read the over 1000 pages of this

"Crellius must decide whether healing is still holy when it has to ask permission. Daphne must fight a god that wants to save the world by removing the very choice that makes anyone alive."

Crellius dilema is one of the weakest I've ever seen

"To defeat the Sunless God, enemies must become witnesses, monsters must accept consequence, lovers must choose without claiming, and even dawn must learn to knock before entering."

A cynical part of me wishes dawn just wouldn't rise at all.

The ai generated image on the cover somehow got worse

Fortunally the "read sample" button was removed so unless you like 5 minutes of ai generated voice reading the most obnoxious, over described, fake deep paragraphs in your life then the contents of this book will remain an mystery

Forgot to tell because didn't care much about: the dryads in this trilogy are like Amazons

Edit: so at some point while I was sleeping an update happened and the "read sample" option is back now. Still not reading this

This saga reads like a student trying to hit the minimum ammount of words in an essay

"But when wounded humans begin leaving prayers at the tree that was once her body, a new law awakens in the ash:

Witness.

Not worship. Not ownership. Not obedience."

I'll be honest, this feels like it was written by a Reddit atheist who believe they know how to fix society

This has less pages than the first book but it's still more than what it deserves

The ai generated image on the cover is a pain in the eyes to analyse

This map is terrible

The sample only goes up until chapter 5

"If one hand could reach the surviving branch before dawn, then another could follow with a petition, a knife, a doctrine, a child, or a god's interpretation of what her survival was supposed to mean."

"Someone had stood before Daphne's old wound long enough to choose the branch, tie the knot, and turn her survival into a surface where another person's grief could be left."

2 pages in and we're already dealing with this bs

"That was how quickly a law become a theft when frightened hands found it useful."

The reason why this books has so many pages os because the "writer" shoves as many supposedly profound lines as they can while also over describing everything

"There it was: command trying to dress itself as concern. Daphne studied her, and Thaleia shut her mouth."

See?

"Some were prayers, some warnings, some claims pretending to be apologies. Some were evidence left by people who no longer trusted courts, temples, groves, kings, gods, or their own memory."

"『It is not testimony if it becomes worship,』 Thaleia said."

『Then we teach it not to kneel.』

"Ione, very softly, asked,『Can testimony be taught?』"

"『Yes,』 Daphne said. 『Badly, at first.』"

So... Daphne wants to eternally change human behavior. That sounds horrifying

"I brought rue, honey, clean linen, barley cakes, willow bark, and three temple bandages stolen from a room where priests were arguing whether people like me should be purified before or after testimony."

"Only what had already been purchased with tithes from people who bleed."

"A child asking the first honest challenge Heliodon has permitted him."

"Whether the god of truth requires defense from truth."

So yeah, Apollo is reduced to a petty tyrant here

"Daphne's voice was not in the chamber. He knew that. She was not sending him a command, and she would hate the idea of becoming another god inside his bones. The words were his own memory of her refusal, given edge by the gold-white wound she had left in him."

Seriously, what's the point of such exaggerated writing?

Don't think we needed 2 paragraphs talking about how Luun's injury isn't just a injury

"Hecate stepped into the Moon Chamber wearing one face this time, which was never a comfort. The goddess had chosen the mother's shape: dark hair braided with keys, eyes black at the center and silver at the rim, mouth curved as if amusement were a knife she enjoyed polishing."

I hate being reminded of this Maiden-Mother-Crone template

"Not impossible, then; only forbidden by the assumptions of men who thought inheritance meant sons because sons were easier to mistake for continuation."

You can't waste a chance for empty "profound" lines, huh?

Hecate wants this witch to use some whatever ingredients to create... a being

"It did not know no as rejection, not yet; no had been ingredient, no had been power, no had been stolen, ground, poured, sung over, shaped, and fed into the vessel as if refusal were a seed one could plant in any soil and harvest obedience from later."

Don't ask what's going on, it's not that remarkable

"Second rule. No one touches the tree without asking the grove, and the grove's answer must be interpreted by more than one voice."

"A single interpreter becomes a priest."

When I said this was written by a atheist, it wasn't supposed to be serious

"anything made from violation is owned witness before destruction, unless it is actively killing and there's no other choice."

"Dryads who had worshipped her in silence, humans who had feared her into symbol, even Kalliane, even Ione, even Thaleia—all of them had to rearrange themselves around the simple fact that Daphne's voice shake. She let them see it."

"To him, Daphne is not merely a woman reborn from myth. She is the impossible answer: dryad, survivor, living sunlight, and the one power that could give darkness an heir."

The plot is Daphne has a special womb and due to that vampire King edgelord is trying to use her to get an heir immune to the sun

Of course it's ai generated image on the cover

Ps: I'm only reading the SAMPLE. Zero chance I'll spend money to read the whole book

If the ridiculous ammount of pages doesn't give you an idea, here's a comparison:

You can read the entire 7 books Chronicles of Narnia saga in less pages 🫩

Lots of chapters

"The second was that men assumed sacred things did not mind being touched.

They came in summer with bronze knives and clean white robes, laughing softly as if laughter became holy when carried beneath the branches of a laurel."

I can't believe I got to use this meme a THIRD time

"—not to be adored, not to be immortalized, not to become a symbol sung by men who never heard the terror in the song."

It quickly became clear this Daphne would be a terrible protagonist

"The name moved through the clearing. Not as Apollo had spoken it in pursuit. Not as priests had sung it in ownership. The dryads spoke it like a door being found beneath vines."

That's not the profound writing you think it is

I don't think this book had an editor or a beta reader. Because somehow Daphne knows that the warrior nymph is named Thaleia before the woman introduced herself

"They knew who she meant. Of course they knew. Every tree knew. Every nymph knew. Every girl who had ever fled a god knew."

It's one of those books that treat every female character as a victim of sexism and misoginy

Pan is here. For some reason

"The answer: not a woman, not a survivor, not Daphne, but an answer, a key, a womb with a myth wrapped around it before she had even learned how long her new hands could hold themselves steady."

Yeah, yeah, yeah

"Alone in the heart of Nocthrys, Luun wore only the shape Hecate had given him and Hades had permitted him to keep."

He's a emo edgelord

"She was not beautiful in the soft manner of court poets or priestly lies. Luun had owned, courted, fed upon, spared, and destroyed beauties enough to make the word almost dull."

So he's a serial killer but I'm supposed to see him as a good love interest?

"He had not ruled the Blood Court for a thousand years by mistaking appetite for vision, at least not where anyone could see him do it.

Not merely a womb.

A threshold. A bride of impossible consequence."

Hope this vampire King dies 😑

"I know every human Apollo has polished brightly enough to mistake himself for a star."

"Not fear. Not yet. Apollo had chased Daphne once and failed so spectacularly that poets had been needed to make his failure sound like romance."

If you told the "writer" of this book about the myth of Hecuba or Asclepius, this person would burst into flames

"Kingship is inheritance. Without that, a kingdom is only a long interruption before dust."

What makes this idiot better than Apollo?

"Phaeron had Daphne's problem in reverse. He had been made into a symbol before he had ever been allowed to be a child."

Oh great!! 🙄

Luun is the type of father that treats his sons as investiments and then get's annoyed when the sons don't achieve his impossible demands

"Luun could teach her something else.

Patience. Night. Revenge. A throne from which she would never again need to run.

He imagined her beside him in Nocthrys, not trembling and newly born, but crowned in black laurel, her sunlight veiled but not extinguished."

It get's worse, unfortunally

"He imagined Apollo watching from the heavens while the woman he had failed to possess chose the king his light could not kill. He imagined a child between them, dark-eyed and sun-crowned, laughing beneath noon while temples broke open and vampires stepped from centuries of shadow."

Don't know how the reader is supposed to care about this guy

"Every king required a private place of failure. Men who lacked one became stupid. Gods who lacked one became Apollo."

Dude, shut up, you're not that much better

He has a mausoleum for the experiment sons he had that failed to survive the sunlight

"I have found the mother of the heir who will avenge you."

This piece of shit has yet to have a first interaction with Daphne, but he already talks as if she belongs to him 🤬

The writer is Lizzie Stoddart

"Discover the original stories of nine magical women as we celebrate the witch in her truest form: a feminist icon."

These aren't the original stories

Witches weren't supposed to be feminist icons

Not sure if the Grey Sisters count as witches

"shifting the men into the wild beasts their greed-fuelled hearts resemble. Circe endures a firce testament to the undeniable strength of women, and the defenses they have been forced to conjure throughout history."

I had no idea that a woodpecker was a wild beast and that Picus was greedy 😑

"Too cruel? Did I choose them what they are? or change them from themselves by poisonous charms?"

"But any draught, pure water, natural wine, out of my cup, revealed them to themselves and to each other. Change? there was no change; only disguise gone from them unawares: and had there been one right true man of them

he would have drunk the draught as I had drunk, and stood unchanged, and looked me in the eyes, abashing me before him."

Yeah, yeah, yeah 🙄

"Nothing has been invented except the silences the old poets left: the long evening in the temple before the god arrives, the inside of the labyrinth, the centuries a guardian spent at its post before any hero set out."

Trust me, a LOT of things were invented

"Many of them were not born monstrous — they were made so, usually by a god, usually unfairly"

Turn out that the majority of the examples in this book were born monsters

The Introduction segment of this called Arachne a martyr. Which is... a choice

"He says she was the loveliest woman in the country — that men traveled from distant cities to look at her, that they forgot why they had come."

...See? Told you things were invented

And whoever wrote this just gave up trying to put how the priestesses worked in ancient Greece

No, you don't get chosen and you don't just throw your daughter at the temple because you're too poor to deal with possible suitors

What a surprise...

She's super dedicated to her job, she's very popular and she's sooo humble about her appearence 🙄

"Poseidon did not announce himself the way the poets later claimed."

I don't remember any poet claiming the god appeared in a dramatic way

So here she can turn water into stone, but not sea water. And for some reason she tried to sleep on a hay grass bed but it was petrified by the morning

Pegasus wasn't described as white

Ps: her sisters were removed from the narrative

The writer is JP Cesaro

Some of the contents of this book are:

Medusa, Heracles, the Labyrinth, the Amazons, Daedalus and Icarus, Atlantis

There are more but the chapter titles weren't descriptive enough for me to identity

"Behind the monstrous image of Medusa is a more complex and disturbing human story."

Medusa is one of the least complex characters in mythology

"For women dedicated to a goddess, especially a virgin deity like Athena, chastity was not just symbolic. It was absolute. A priestess's body even was seen as an extension of the sacred space itself. Any violation of that purity, whether real of perceived, was not a private matter. It became a public crisis."

Honestly the myth of Triteia should be the litimus test to see if the person ever bothered to do research on the priestesses of Athena

Pausanias, Description of Greece 7. 22. 8 (trans. Jones) (Greek travelogue C2nd A.D.) :"Ares mated with Triteia the daughter of Triton, that this maiden was priestess to Athena, and that Melanippos (Melanippus), the son of Ares and Triteia, founded the city [of Triteia in Akhaia] when he grew up, naming it after his mother."

"She lives alone. She does not seek out victims; they come her. There is something nearly defensive in how she is portrayed, as if the monstruous traits ascribed to her are less about inherent evil and more how others see and approach her."

Of course her sisters Stheno and Euryale were removed

According to this author, the origins of the mythology around Heracles is most likely based on a random mercenary? 🤨

Every god falls victim of the "dark and brooding" trope

Hey, at least he's with the woman he loved. If you think that's the minimum, it isn't

"Twelve keys will release Zeus from Icarus and those keys are each a mate to the chosen ones."

"Finding out his mate is a griffin and blind as well does not stop Hephaestus from pursuing the man."

I refuse to read the sample

The other books from this series aren't better

Ok

Looks like his fall from Olympus happened at a older age. Since he's already walking and it's later mentioned to be holding his hammer

Things are a little rushed, but should be expected since this book only has 25 pages

Why Aphrodite would spy against him? In fact why they're still married?

"And he worked—actually toiled!—something alien to the rest of them, even those whose bellicose temperaments had taken them into the very heart of battle over the millennia. The difference was that his work was dirty, and worse, that he actually perspired doing it."

Apollo and Hermes each have like half a dozen domains

Hephaestus created something that will change humanity in secret from Zeus for... curiosity basically

"In all the greek stories Hephaestus never got a happy ending."

HUH?! Did you even read the Odyssey?? It's very clear there Hephaestus got divorced from Aphrodite and in the Iliad it's said he's married to Charis/Aglaia

These will be short stories of about 25 pages

Not sure if the mythology of the Pleiades counts as "untold stories"

"Within the seaside realm, Queen Cassiopeia bore the title of the Queen of a Single Sentence"

That's the first time I hear Cassiopeia getting such title

Why the title of the book has Andromeda and the synopsis is focused on Cassiopeia?

And honestly Pegasus isn't compeling enough to get a retelling partially centered around him

This one I'm worried about

I wonder if this retelling will dwelve on the tragedy that Arcas had a family that now doesn't know why he's missing

All 3 books have ai generated image on the cover 😐

@sarafangirlart @arrow-of-orion

I think it would be nice to see more art of Orfevre watching Dream Journey winning the Takarazuka Kinen and/or the Arima Kinen of 2009

"Aphrodite inspires love in both men and gods, but her heart always returns to Apollo and Ares."

Why Apollo?

Ai generated image on the cover

There's good chance the synopsis was done with ai too

Things got so bad that it's impressive to see a book acknowledge that Aphrodite has 2 origins

Sounds fine

This book feels more as a analysis of her myths

"Forced to do the biding of Hera and Hephaestus"

I have a bad feeling about this

"At first, she thought him busy with the onset of the Trojan War, but then came his announcement. The horrid declaration to take Demeter's inept daughter for his daughter."

That's not the first, or the second, or even the third book where Ares basically abandons Aphrodite to find "someone better" 😑

Also quite interesting that instead of the Charities as friends we have Polemos as her loyal friend

"A mortal she had been blessing with immortality, or attempting to before Hephaestus found him. Hera intervened in a way, saying that what she did had been merciful in comparison. But Aphrodite felt it cruel, she was all the boy had, and now she too had been taken from him just as he was robbed from her."

Wtf...

"And step into the sacred night where she meets Anchises, a mortal who sees her not as a deity, but as a woman of flesh, fire, and mystery."

I would say that Anchises already believed she was a deity within the first 5 minutes

"Gaia, mother of all, watched with a sorrowful smile.

At last, she thought. A counterbalance to the violence of sons."

Aphrodite won't help with your expectations, Gaia

"There will be many who mistake your presence for promise, your glance for consent, your smile for surrender. They will build stories around you, claiming you were made to be theirs."

This isn't even the third chapter

Also Aphrodite has myths where she refuses someone and she wasn't sleeping around as much as you're trying to imply

"Whether it's for her business, her outfit, or her non-existent dating life, she likes things just so."

Oh no... 🤦‍♂️

"『So?』 Ares leaned back in his seat. 『We're exes.』

『That's not the same. It was several thousand years ago and you know I was just rebelling over the whole mismatched marriage thing.』"

Ares and Aphrodite broke up, and he's trying to get back with Bellona

"I didn't cause Troy."

"Paris wanted Helen's love. And she was at least a little infatuated by him. How was I know it would lead to war?"

So here Aphrodite is trying to claim she had little to do with the war. Because getting a married woman to leave her hometown with a guy she met that same afternoon wouldn't be a scandal in her pov 🤨

"Before she was a monster, she was a woman. This is the whole truth of Medusa."

You know the drill 😑

"But Medusa was not born a monster. In the oldest tellings she was one of three deathless sisters at the edge of the world; in the most famous, she was a mortal woman, a priestess, punished for a crime committed against her, transformed by a goddess, and hunted by a hero who wanted her head as a trophy."

She wasn't born a monster, except she was in the oldest tellings? Which one is it? 🤨

And of course the writer claims that she was a priestess, that after the curse she was living alone, that Perseus wanted her head as a trophy, that this bs is the truth

There's no way you can make 50 chapters about this character

"And of all her beauties, the poet says, the most glorious was her hair, thick and bright and the envy of every woman who saw it, the crown of a girl admired everywhere she went. She was the kind of beauty that draws suitors from far away, hopeful young men who came to look at her and to dream."

You're overselling it

"Ovid gives Medusa a past, and in giving her a past he gives her the thing that turns a monster into a tragedy: the sense of what she lost, and the question of whether she deserved to lose it."

Ovid wrote 1 paragraph with 5 lines. You're REALLY overselling it

"This play asks what happens when the monster finally tells her own story.

Alone in a cave by the sea, Medusa reflects on the life she lost, the gods who betrayed her, and the world that chose fear over truth. Once a devoted priestess of Athena, she was transformed into a creature of legend after an act of violence she neither sought nor deserved."

In other words, is a generic retelling in the most boring way possible

Boring retelling in play form

"Would you like to enjoy a tropical island vacation alongside Medusa?"

No 😐

"From the fallen Gorgon's blood are born Pegasus, the white winged horse, and Chrysaor, the golden-maned lion. Then, in a blaze of divine light, a baby girl appears upon her mother's chest—a child with fiery red hair and emerald-green eyes."

Oc daughter of Medusa

"As each battle pushes her closer to the truth of her origins, Odessa discovers that Medusa was never the monster the world remembers. The true curse was born from envy, pride, and the cruelty of those who feared a woman's beauty more than her suffering."

I'm supposed to believe that Odessa never heard of Medusa being a victim before?...

"With the sea god Poseidon finally discovering the existence of his daughter, Odessa inherits powers beyond imagination—the fury of the ocean, the gaze of the Gorgon, and the strength to challenge Olympus itself."

In this book demigods work similar to the ones in Rick Riordan books 😑

"rivalries ignite and the gods descend into war, Odessa must decide whether she will become the instrument of vengeance Athena believes her to be, or forge a new destiny built on love, forgiveness, and truth."

Medusa retellings really like making a powerful oc daughter that will fix all problems with the Olympians

"Her face was not cruel. It was exausted. Her mouth trembled. Her eyes — those cursed, fatal eyes — were full not of hatred, but grief. Ancient grief. The kind that had lived too long without witness."

I've developed total apathy toward this type of story. This writer, Sally, really wants to put the reader into tears but after seeing hundreds of books with this same beat it doesn't work anymore

Oh yeah, Medusa doesn't have her wings here. The symbolism isn't lost

"Once, she had been praised for her hair. Men and women alike had spoken of it as though night itself had softened and become human."

She wasn't praised to such extent

"For one breath, the boy beneath the hero wanted to lower his blade. He wanted to ask who had hurt her. He wanted to know why a goddess of wisdom would leave so much suffering behind."

I'm so glad he didn’t

And of course the writer doesn't mention Perseus using the head of the Gorgon to rescue Andromeda and his mother Danae. That would make him look good! 🙄

"Medusa is blessed. Medusa's hair is finer than sunlight. Medusa’s eyes are softer than dawn. Medusa, Medusa, Medusa."

"The jealousy of a goddess who could not bear that people loved a mortal more tenderly than they feared an immortal."

My god... 🫩

Crysaor here is a lion for some reason

Stheno and Euryale are so pathetic that somehow they failed to notice that Medusa was dead until this oc daughter started crying

Perseus wasn't even invisible so I really don't understand how they failed so badly

"Their last gentleness in a world that had called them monsters."

"Medusa laughing beside the sea. Medusa braiding flowers into her hair. Medusa dancing barefoot through the caverns. Their little sister. The youngest. The gentlest.

The one who cried whenever injured birds fell from nests. The one who always believed people could be better than they were."

Not sure how to explain how absurd this is

It... exist

"Iphigenia is a scholar first and princess second. When her father summons her as a ceremonial sacrifice to Artemis, she is eager to go to him–until she discovers it was a ploy for an arranged marriage. Since any life is preferable to matrimony, Iphigenia flees into the wild and soon finds herself caught up in the hunt for a chimera."

I fail to see how being a scholar means Iphigenia wants to be a human sacrifice

"Midas’ kingdom is on the brink of ruin. He needs more than a political union–he needs a woman who can teach his kingdom literacy and currency. So, when Iphigenia abandons him at the altar, he does something no man has ever done before and strikes a deal with Artemis. If Midas can woo his runaway bride into a willing wife, Iphigenia is his."

I don't know what else to say besides "this is stupid"

Iphigenia is 32 years old, which is very rare to see in romantasy

Bonus image:

All this information I got from the Instagram of the author. She really likes "micro-tropes"

This book has 380 pages

The content warning page in this book has: domestic violence, transphobia, homophobia, child abuse, child death, cannibalism, mentions of sexual assault, slavery, suic*dal ideation

... 😐

And the writer is american because of course she is

"As she comes of age, however, that fragile peace is threatened by strange, burgeoning feelings for her handmaiden. Amidst this crisis of identity, another looms as an ancient goddess only Iphigenia can see simmers beneath the surface of reality."

It's sapphic Iphigenia where she has a crush on a servant named Euthalia, a character I don't care about

Also the first chapter ends with Iphigenia thinking on how much she wants to drown a guy

She's a sociopath 😐

"...only to be interrupted by some pimply faced boy whose only purpose in life was to escort her to something as banal as weaving lessons, of all gods affronted things. She'd collapse to the ground in laughter if she weren't so angry."

Oh great!! She's a "not like other girls" stereotype 🙄

"You...you should really be nicer to me, Princess. I'm not that little kid you used to shove around anymore"

It get's worse

"We're all alone out here. I could do something horrible. Then you'd have to marry me."

For the surprise of no one who follows my account, we have a sexual harassment scene that never happened in myths to showcase how the protagonist is opressed

But seriously? I'm supposed to believe that a random soldier can constantly torment a princess and make threats towards her without fear of being beheaded?

Look at these horrible dialogue scenes. This is supposed to be Bronze Age Mycenae, but Iphigenia talks like an modern teenager

"I should have your head on my mantle!"

Why you haven't done that yet then?!?! It's not like this Lysander is a high ranking general, in your own words he barely fits the armor that's too big for his thin body

Odysseus and Diomedes here were the ones to announce the marriage proposal of Achilles with Iphigenia

"She'd yet to have even shed her first blood and here these strangers were, discussing just how soon she'd be able to produce an heir for Achilles. She'd been reduced to the status of a broodmare, just like that."

I just know half of the book will be internal monologues about sexism and misoginy

"Electra whined, and then smashed a vase to the stone floor."

That's how we're introduced to this character

"Iphigenia was tempted to knock her sister over the head several times, especially when Electra had outright called her a bitch, but she restrained herself, opting instead to focus on the more pressing matter at hand rather than her little sister's raging jealousy."

The writer really hates Electra for some reason

Why she's using modern curse words?

"Marriage was the last thing she wanted, not when she'd been so close to preventing it from ever happening in the first place."

Going from a scene from the first chapter, it looks like Iphigenia is learning witchcraft for... something

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it.

You hate men, and you hate the idea of marriage 😑

"IPHIGENIA: WHAT THE KNIFE REQUIRED is the story of what happens before the altar and what happens after — the years at Tauris, the practice of looking at an impossible thing until you can hold it, and the return that finally comes when her brother arrives on the shore as a stranger."

Ok then

I guess she became very melancholic after many years in Tauris

My bar for retellings is so low that this one portraying Agamemnon as caring towards Iphigenia is impressive

Clytemnestra actually having a personality beyond hating Agamemnon is also good to see