Achilles and Patroclus: we fucking love each other

Odysseus: I fucking love my wife

Orpheus: I also fucking love my wife

Ariadne: I fucking love Theseus and wait where's he going oh hi Dionysus

Atalanta: I fucking love nature

Perseus: I fucking love my mom

Oedipus: you know where this is going

Narcissus: I fucking love me

Daedalus: I fucking love inventing (and not being in a tower)

Jason: I fucking love power

Alexander The Great: I also fucking love power (and also my boyfriend)

Midas: I fucking love being rich

you believe me like a god

"A timely and timeless reimagining of the story of Dionysus, Greek God of ecstasy and madness, revelry and ruin, for readers of The Song of Achilles and Elektra"

Already to a bad start 🚩

The author made up a character named Phaidros who never existed in the myths and gave him the role of saving baby Dionysus even though everyone knows it was Hermes and the Nereids who raised him. Like, what’s the point of calling it a Dionysus story if Dionysus barely shows up and the spotlight is all on this random OC? Also male maenads?? Where the purpose of the Maenads are women that were finally free from the judges of their society. The term maenad has come to be associated with a wide variety of women, supernatural, mythological, and historical

And don’t even get me started on calling him Helios’ knight. Ancient Greeks didn’t have knights! It’s just another self-insert fanfic dressed up as a myth retelling, with a forced romance between Phaidros and Dionysus that has nothing to do with the original hymns. If you love Dionysus and his wild, divine, complex energy skip this one. It’s not a retelling, it’s a rewrite with an agenda.