Claire North

I really enjoyed this. It's a book that aims to fill in the gaps between other narratives. So what did Penelope get up to in the 20 years between Odysseus leaving and returning after the battles at Troy? It's not the first book to take this gap as an invitation to be inventive, but it's certainly a good entry in the field. Told by the goddess Hera, there is a great mixture of feminine understanding, exasperation at males (all of them, present & absent), of taking matters into your own hands and general snark. How did an island over populated with women manage without a generation of men? in this case by the women filling males roles, because who else is there to do them? Yet the women are not all united. As with all human interactions, some people have different motivations and different reasons for their actions. Love, hope, freedom, hate, they all feature in here, driving different people forward. It's good, but the story isn't exactly driven along. It meanders a fair bit. I suspect that is the reason for this being the first of a trilogy. I think it may have been a better book had it been a bit snappier.… (mais)

Thank you to NetGalley and Redhook for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.
Pub Date: June 4, 2024

3.25 stars
Unfortunately I didn't enjoy the ending to this trilogy as much as the first two books. Everything wrapped up nicely and the book was decent overall but the first two books were narrated by a brutal Hera and hilarious and sassy Aphrodite (respectively) where as this was voiced by no-nonsense Athena. That was probably done on purpose given the content of each book, but I found it didn't hold my attention as well as the first two.… (mais)