Thank you to Sourcebooks for the ARC!

I don’t think I’m gonna be able to express my feelings about this one in a sufficient way, but I’ll try. I was excited to read another take on Clytemnestra after reading Daughters of Sparta by Claire Heywood last year and loving it.

This one just did NOT work for me, though. The second half is a BATTLE to get through, and completely turned me off from ever reading retellings about the Oresteia because I just cannot stand Clytemnestra’s children. I know that Clytemnestra’s stories have never been kind or fun, but this entire book was just brutal to read. I had never heard of her first husband, Tantalus, so I was completely thrown by that particular tragedy from the start. Agamemnon is one of my most hated people in all of Greek myth, so I don’t know why I thought I could enjoy a book that featured him so heavily. He’s somehow worse in this than I even expected.

Honestly, having read so many Greek retellings, this might just be me being super nitpicky, but I found myself annoyed with a lot of the characterizations in this book. I hated characters I’ve never had much of an opinion towards because I felt like the author highlighted every single negative aspect of them. I know that no one in mythology is a saint, but I was just repulsed by everyone. Even my dude Odysseus came out and crushed my entire soul, which was truly a gut punch. There weren’t really new twists to the myth, so nothing super interesting in terms of plot.

However, I did manage to make it to the end (even though I skimmed most of the second half). I will say that Clytemnestra as a character kept me intrigued because she was so dead set on vengeance and I really wanted to see her follow through. Her interactions with Agamemnon, though difficult to stomach, were well written. Unfortunately the other characters and unflinchingly brutal and slow plot just did not make this an enjoyable read for me.