Not a fan. Went into it blind as I've never read any of Miller's other works, but I am semi-familiar with the Odyssey and the Telegony literatures so I thought this would be a cool telling of Circe's hedonistic and free willing motivations, maybe even a kind of villain origin story. But no.

I could probably just do a wall of text just dumping all my grievances but for the sake of legibility I'll just make a bullet point list:

 

✱ Circe is one of the most unlikeable character's I've ever read. She has no depth, no passions, no actual motivations outside of the ones clearly stated in the original literatures (i.e. being in love with Glaucus; changing Scylla out of jealousy; is into witchcraft for plot reasons; etc). Miller's Circe is boiled down to nothing but a victim. A victim of men, of women, of family, of Gods and mortals, of her own victimhood. Everything happens to her, but not until the last, idk, 10 pages does she actively do anything, which happens and ends as quickly as it began.

 

✱ The plot is lackluster at best. Circe herself doesn't have a story that Miller can follow line for line and give artistic license, but rather a few cameos in the stories of others and so those cameos become reference points in the timeline. Sadly this means the book seems like it's just skipping from point to point with nothing but some limpid storytelling about other myths in-between (the Minotaur and Ariadne, Helen of Troy, Icarus, etc). Only the post-Odyssey plotlines have more ingenuity to them, if only because there really isn't much that survives from the Telegony, which is what most of the events seem to be based on (Telegonus' existence, his prophecy, Circe marrying Telemachus). And what does happen during this arc is... boring and packed with a lot of 'and this is what happened while you were sitting on this island'. Ick.

 

✱ The fact that Circe ends her "forever" exile by telling Helios, in more words but with less meaning, "I'm going to tell on you." If it had been that simple all along, then why even bother with the long episodes of self-pity and loneliness? (Oh that's right, she had to be on Aiaia at least until Odysseus showed up, because plot.)

 

✱ The... bastardization of Odysseus. He was written to be some kind of sadistic warmonger who succumbs to PTSD(?) and some kind of schizophrenic induced paranoia to align with the idea that Heroes and anyone favored by the Gods are as morally corrupt as the Gods themselves, who Circe particularly detests because. . . victimhood again. And that only in death do these mortals realize their mistakes, whereas Gods don't die so they live forever in idiocy; idk. OH, BUT NOT CIRCE. She's not like other girls.✨ But she still fucks Odysseus because he's ~manipulative~ and charming and she was lonely. :( Oh, and because the forced plotline.

 

✱Finally, there was little to nothing of feminism in this book. It had terrible men, sure, but it had equally terrible women - if not worse. There was no challenge to the status quo, there was no epiphany, no changes, not even some cosmic, karmic event that showed how complex, toxic, and deeply entrenched misogyny was and is. Sure, there's a couple pretty lines, but they lead to nothing. An offhand statement to look pretty in the flowery prose.

 

I don't think I'll be reading any more of Miller's books, past or future.