gilda_elise

For fans of Madeline Miller's Circe, a stunning debut following Clytemnestra, the most notorious villainess of the ancient world and the events that forged her into the legendary queen.

As for queens, they are either hated or forgotten. She already knows which option suits her best...

You were born to a king, but you marry a tyrant. You stand by helplessly as he sacrifices your child to placate the gods. You watch him wage war on a foreign shore, and you comfort yourself with violent thoughts of your own. Because this was not the first offence against you. This was not the life you ever deserved. And this will not be your undoing. Slowly, you plot.

But when your husband returns in triumph, you become a woman with a choice.

Acceptance or vengeance, infamy follows both. So, you bide your time and force the gods' hands in the game of retribution. For you understood something long ago that the others never did.

If power isn't given to you, you have to take it for yourself.

A blazing novel set in the world of Ancient Greece for fans of Jennifer Saint and Natalie Haynes, this is a thrilling tale of power and prophecies, of hatred, love, and of an unforgettable Queen who fiercely dealt out death to those who wronged her.

On parr with Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles, Clytemnestra tells the story of the Spartan princess who would become the queen of Mycenae. But this time the story is told through Clytemnestra’s eyes.

I never understood why Clytemnestra would be portrayed as a monster for killing her husband; not only does he have one of their daughters sacrificed to the gods for fair winds, but he had her first husband and their infant son killed. If that isn’t reason enough for murder, I don’t know what is.

Which is why I so loved the retelling of Clytemnestra’s story. So often she’s in the shadows of her more famous relatives: her sister, Helen, the beauty of Troy. Her brothers Castor and Polydeuces, who lived on in the sky. Her mother, Leda, seduced (or raped, depending on who’s telling the story,) by Zeus in the form of a swan. Even her cousin, Penelope, who would marry Odysseus. Here, at last, her story is brought to the fore.

She is a strong woman who had her faults. But she didn’t deserve the story created about her. She was a bitter woman who looked for justice the only way she knew how.