The book Circe is the story of the witch from the Odyssey brought to vivid life. The daughter of Helios the sun god and the nymph Perse, Circe discovers she has a strange power unlike those of other gods. She is able to unlock the power of plants with careful work. After changing her cousin into a monster, she is banished to the island Aiaia. Even in her banishment, Circe still crosses paths with familiar Greek heroes, gods, and demigods. From attending the birth of the Minotaur to meeting Odysseus’s son, her immortal epic spans the ages.
This is a beautiful narrative. Circe’s voice guides through her childhood among immortals, to her first love of a mortal man through her path crossing beings of all types. It is a vivid retelling with fleshed out characters. Circe is at once sympathetic, and often finds herself betrayed by the political machinations she doesn’t understand until it is too late. The character herself is compassionate and awe inspiring. She has good reason to turn sailors into pigs, and is forced to adopt a cruel face to keep her island safe.
I will add the caveat that I am not horribly familiar with Greek stories, so I can’t say for sure the book is being loyal to the lore. However, considering the author’s background with a degree in classics I suspect it is. From what I understand Greek lore can be contradictory because it comes from oral tradition and different city states. But the story feels true to the stories I do know. I also don’t work with the Greek gods, so I can’t make any comment on how accurate her portrayal of them is.
Side note—I will never understand the hubris Jason of the Argonauts possessed. He seemed to have forgotten what Medea could do when he decided to divorce her. Did Jason really think a woman capable of dismembering her own brother would quietly accept being cast aside?The author has a talent for making characters you should dislike sympathetic, and revealing sides of heroes that are not pleasant. There is a lot of nuance, and characters you can empathize with even if you don’t like what they do, as well as heroes who do terrible things. I also love the magic in the story, because it is an art that is carefully crafted after hard work and doesn’t come out of thin air.
My one issue is this definitely falls into the gods are assholes category of fiction. The behavior seems consistent with the with the myths I know, but even those have multiple interpretations. Considering how nuanced the other characters are, it is odd the gods are all pretty much bastards. In this version Ariadne is drowned by Artemis, but there are other versions where Ariadne and Dionysus married happily. But looking at Circe as a pure novel, it is enjoyable. Even an epic must end, and I found I still wanted more as the book came to a close.