Athena's Champion

This book was filled with quite interesting lessons for me. I always considered myself quite well-versed in Greek mythology, but apparently I knew much less about Theseus than I thought. It seemed surprising to me to see him depicted so negatively - but it was actually very accurate it seems. His kidnapping and rape of Helen is not something that David Hair and Cath Mayo came up with, but if I knew about it, I must have forgotten. What Hair and Mayo do do is give Odysseus a life before the context of the Trojan War. They latch on to what apparently also is an established variation of his myth, namely him being the son of Sisyphus and use that to create conflict between Laertes, who now is only the husband of Odysseus's mother, and the rest of the family. Beside a number of well-known figures from Greek mythology (e.g. Athena, Hades, Persephone, Zeus, Helen) the authors also introduce a few original characters, key among whom is Bria, another character devoted to Athena, who is essential for the cliffhanger at the end of this book, the first in a trilogy. One of the less successful aspects of the novel for me was the romantic connection between Cassandra of Troy (whose name is cleverly disguised at first) and Odysseus, and I also simply did not like Athena, who usually is one of my favorite characters from Greek mythology. Overall I did find this book lacking regarding emotional accessibility in quite a similar way as Madeline Miller's book about Circe and Patroclus. Hair and Mayo allow themselves to tell a much more original story with many highly interesting additions. I like how they acknowledge the existence of Artemis in the context of the golden apple and how they create a lot of information on how divinity is organized. And it all feels very plausible. This may not be a perfect novel but it is a great one for anyone who enjoys Greek mythology and is open-minded enough to deal with a retelling that throws things around a bit while still staying true to the original.