(This review is kind of long, so there’s a TL;DR at the end for those who don’t want to read the whole thing.)
Buckle up kiddos, because this book is a wild, wild, ride. Prepare to be hurt. Prepare to cry. Prepare to enjoy every second of the madness. When I say I would lay my life on the line for Circe, there is hardly any hyperbole.
Background: I discovered Madeline Miller a year or two ago, when I read her Song of Achilles. It’s an intense, sweeping tale, but that’s a review for another day. The point being, I was super excited when I found out she was doing a new book, as she’s an amazing writer. More on that later.
Anyway, Circe, as you probably expected, is a retelling of the life of the enchantress Circe. She is known in Greek mythology as a goddess of magic and transformation, most famously in Homer’s Odyssey. The book follows her through her father’s halls (her father is Helios the titan), various adventures, whirlpools and remote islands. As far as I can tell, most, though not all of the plot elements are taken from original texts about her.
(At this point, I’ll say that I don’t think I’d recommend this book for younger audiences. There’s swearing and, y’know, other things going on that could be considered pretty unsavoury. No explicit sex scenes or anything, this isn’t Fifty Shades, but still. It can get to be a little much.)
Midnight Frost