![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Recent reading
Oct. 19th, 2023 08:56 pmRead The Bull from the Sea by Mary Renault, sequel to The King Must Die in her duology about the Greek hero Theseus. It's hard to say which I liked more— the highlights, for me, were the Cretan bull-leaping arc in the first book (e.g., the Theseus and the Minotaur retelling) and the Theseus-and-Hippolyta arc in this one. Despite the questionable beginning of Theseus immediately going THE GODS MADE US FOR EACH OTHER, I MUST HAVE HER and then dueling with Hippolyta for his life vs. her freedom, they actually have one of the most well-adjusted relationships I've encountered in a Renault novel! This book also included the Theseus-and-Phaedra-and-Hippolytus story, which was interesting to compare to Jennifer Saint's recent retelling; I imagine there is a way to interpret that particular myth that doesn't involve demonizing either Theseus or Phaedra, but neither Renault nor Saint seem to have found it. (Saint's take is that Theseus Is The Worst; Renault's is that Phaedra Is The Worst, in a way that, next to Hippolyta, smacks of the inverse of Not Like Other Girls, but admittedly Theseus doesn't come out of it looking great, either.)
Read The Battle of the Labyrinth by Rick Riordan, book #4 of the Percy Jackson series— I'd picked it up because it was the one available on Libby, rather than for the Theseus-myth-adjacent title, but although it focuses on the Daedalus aspects of the myth, Theseus does have a brief, ghostly cameo. (Actually, this book is probably why I'd always assumed Theseus died young, and was surprised to find otherwise, in Renault's retelling: Riordan's ghostly Theseus is just a teenager.) Re-reading this for the first time since middle school, I was very amused to realize that Nico di Angelo was the original moody gay* (pre)teen** necromancer*** of my heart; I am apparently nothing if not consistent. I also got a laugh out of a joke about Blue Ribbon schools and standardized testing that I'm sure went over my head as a kid, when Percy and the gang encounter a sphynx that had updated her whole "answer a riddle to pass" deal to a 20-question pop quiz (via scantron, of course!)
* according to one of the later spin-off series, which I haven't read but was utterly delighted to hear about a few years back
** I think he's 11 or 12 in this book, although technically, he's been 11 since the 1940s
*** son of Hades
Read The Battle of the Labyrinth by Rick Riordan, book #4 of the Percy Jackson series— I'd picked it up because it was the one available on Libby, rather than for the Theseus-myth-adjacent title, but although it focuses on the Daedalus aspects of the myth, Theseus does have a brief, ghostly cameo. (Actually, this book is probably why I'd always assumed Theseus died young, and was surprised to find otherwise, in Renault's retelling: Riordan's ghostly Theseus is just a teenager.) Re-reading this for the first time since middle school, I was very amused to realize that Nico di Angelo was the original moody gay* (pre)teen** necromancer*** of my heart; I am apparently nothing if not consistent. I also got a laugh out of a joke about Blue Ribbon schools and standardized testing that I'm sure went over my head as a kid, when Percy and the gang encounter a sphynx that had updated her whole "answer a riddle to pass" deal to a 20-question pop quiz (via scantron, of course!)
* according to one of the later spin-off series, which I haven't read but was utterly delighted to hear about a few years back
** I think he's 11 or 12 in this book, although technically, he's been 11 since the 1940s
*** son of Hades
