Herc

Immersive, Modern, and not your Disneys' Hercules

Bewertung am 30.08.2023
Bewertet: Buch (Gebundene Ausgabe)

I am in love with this book. I genuinely never wanted it to end, was always excited for the next chapter, and wanted to gatekeep the hellll out of this book to have it be my own personal gem. But everyone deserves to read this; so September 5th everybody better show up and hop on this train because it’s a messy, sad, and crazy ride. This is not Hercules’ biography, rather the bridge of narrations of those around him who loved him or those who got caught and burned in the fire surrounding him. And I found every moment of it to be brilliant. This book felt like a giant gossip session and I loved it. It was like each character was brought into a confessional to just relish in all their honest opinions of Hercules, good or bad, and none of them held back that’s for sure. I laughed more times than can be expected and loved the new perspectives and ways of narrations that the story was told as. Rogerson introduced such unique formats of storytelling it was so much fun. There’s a 50 point bullet point list for all 50 sisters who Herc slept with and their perspectives; it was absolutely perfect and hilarious. However the letter correspondences between characters were truly the shining stars for me. So unique and perfect for building relationships and showing personalities to people who in the original texts may not have had a lot of lines to shine. I will say, this is a more modern retelling of classic tales. You will find more casual language in dialogue (calling prisoners “chickadees” stood out most) and insults (calling people “little shits”) that what you could assume to be found around Greece during the time of Hercules, but I found it to be an immersive, quick, and very enjoyable read. I cannot wait to see what this author decides to do next however I will pay big money to see another character focused novel come from them. It will be hard for me to find another mythology book that can top this one unless it comes from Rogerson herself.