The Oresteia, which covers the lives and deaths of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon and their children, Orestes and Elektra, was also an integral part of this story. You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. Ici l’histoire nous est narrée à travers les yeux de la déesse Hera, une déesse que je ne portais pas vraiment dans mon cœur et en lisant ce livre je me suis rendue compte qu’en fait je voyais Hera comme on me l’avait décrite à savoir une femme jalouse vindicative et terrifiante. In Ithaca, her story comes to life, and we see the brutality, heartache, determination, and strength of a Queen.

Keeping one's own son, self, and people alive - now that's going to take a much wilier person than Odysseus.Instead I found the snarky, modern language jarring and disruptive from the more common pseudo-mythical narration North uses, and it had the effect of finding the Queen of the Gods more petty than I would otherwise and it broke my immersion to North’s world.

Athena loves it when a hunky warrior clad in bronze kneels before her inner sanctum, and when a man violated a woman upon her altar, it was the woman whose hair she turned to snakes in retribution for this sacrilege.I do think telling the story through a third party created some distance between the reader and Penelope, who easily fades to the background in the large cast of characters, many of whom I struggled to keep track of at times. She also holds nothing back while voicing her own brutally honest opinions about some of the "heroes" and how poets and bards wax eloquent while singing praises of their exploits, often neglecting to mention the contributions of their female counterparts or the lesser known mortals who have played an important role in their success. But this is very much a rereadable book, so no doubt I will enjoy it again before the next installment is released. Spent a large chunk of time online reading up on what we do know about Mycenaean Greece, watched documentaries, listened to a tonne of podcasts (shout out again to the Myths and Legends Podcast, which is fabulous) and was lucky enough that the British Museum was having an exhibition about Mycenae at the time, as well as extensive collections, so generally nerded around the BM.