If you love Greek mythology retellings, unique, narrative voices and if you love a large cast of characters, I’d highly recommend picking up Ithaca.

Hera, being a god, can not only tell us what's going on in Ithaca and in her surroundings, but what is happening to Odysseus at the same time (she wryly gives us updates, most of which center on her sarcastic descriptions of him being so tortured about being sexily held prisoner on Ogygia with Calypso). But as everyone waits for the balance of power to tip, Penelope knows that any choice she makes could plunge Ithaca into bloody civil war . Even novices to the Greek myths and legends will be able to, with perhaps only a cursory check of Wikipedia, thoroughly enjoy North’s treatment of Penelope’s story. There are main characters too, of course, who do have more onpage time, but Hera is fickle and arbitrarily decides who gets her attention best, favouring a character that's not Penelope.

And hold on a moment, Paris was at the wedding of Achilles’ parents, presumably before Achilles was born, so he’s how old…? It was impossible to connect to any of the characters, which led to a lack of connection to the book as a whole, majorly detracting from my enjoyment of it. I'd like to continue seeing more of the gods and goddesses that watch down on the mortals of the story – and sometimes intervene – but not at the e She’s a goddess “of a certain age,” getting plumper with time, who sees the gods and goddesses in Olympus though unflinching eyes.

We also see the story though the perspective of Penelope’s son Telemachus, and though several of the suitors. Athena loves it when a hunky warrior clad in bronze kneels before her inner sanctum, and when a man violated a woman upon her altar, it was the woman whose hair she turned to snakes in retribution for this sacrilege. The author chose to tell the story from the goddess Hera’s POV rather than Penelope – I think this was a big mistake, as it made the story feel divorced from Penelope’s emotions and feelings. Das ist vom Konzept her schon sehr schlüssig, auch wenn ich vielleicht nicht unbedingt die Zielgruppe bin.Ithaca is mostly retelling what was happening in the background of The Odyssey, but it also references The Iliad quite often, as that covers why Odysseus left Ithaca in the first place. Narrated by Hera, the story comments on the different ways in which the most famous queens of Greece - Helen, Clytemnestra, and Penelope - navigate the balance between motherhood, womanhood, and queenhood.

In Ithaca, her story comes to life, and we see the brutality, heartache, determination, and strength of a Queen. There is a lot of focus on her queenly appearance and relationship with her maid and women on Ithaca.Each has very different interests and views, but each embodies a different aspect of power – including power which is threatened or changing by the world around them. When the sun rose over the ashes of her city, the soldiers of Greece were still hurt, still bloody, still lost, only now there were no stories left, no poets to tell them that they were heroes. Because of the POV style, not because of the prose; the prose is fine, North has some beautifully crafted passages. Even at moments where Hera outlines what is happening outside of Ithaca, she tells of how other women are being treated.