I'm interested in history so was looking forward to reading this book – I actually picked it from the 30 plus unread books waiting for me on the bookshelf. My knowledge of Greek myths is/was very vague and I was keen on being to say to my children "ah yes Zeus, God of thunder do you know he …"
I realised pretty early on however that this wasn’t going to be the book that allowed me to do that and fell out of love with it once I realised the introduction was pretty much the theme for the rest of the book.
I didn’t like the way the book was presented – for example (sorry if this is a stupid question but having read 500 plus pages I still don't know) do some people actually believe this is how the world started? Virgil, Homer and all the other people she quoted, were they just waxing lyrical or is it them explaining what they believed to be a true account of how Athens came about or how a constellation came into being? This wasn’t made clear to the reader. Some sort of background/introduction to Virgil, Homer etc. would have been useful to help put their works into context. There wasn't any kind of conclusion either, in fact I found the ending quite abrupt (I actually turned the page expecting to see more). What happened to all these Gods that the author spent 500 pages naming?
That brings me to my next point – names – how many! The book literally read like this 'A married B and they had C, D and E. C met F and raped her to produce G. D had sex with E then with H and I and had 3 sons J, K and L. K married M who killed K and then married N. N was murdered by D. M murdered D in revenge and then killed herself in grief for her lost husband. And that’s just one paragraph!
That is pretty much what the book is, a list of people having sex (consensual or not), having children, killing (each other or themselves) or turning into trees, rivers, animals and so forth. I get that that is in essence what the Gods did but it was too list like. I wanted little things like why Helen is known as the face that launched a thousand ships, or why we wear laurel wreaths as a sign of victory to stand out rather than be swamped amongst the endless names. What made it more difficult was the fact all of the names were unfamiliar to me – Apollo yes I've heard him before but add Kynossema, Apsyrtos and Anaxarete in to the mix and you can appreciate why it was hard to remember who was who. Again I understand the author couldn’t suddenly start calling everyone Dave (that too would have been confusing) but she needed to someway make them memorable, more recognisable instead of another name beginning with A whose face made Zeus fall in love with her in an instant.
What a randy bugger Zeus was by the way and how much of a bitch was his wife? See I wanted more of that!
It's not that the book went over my head. I just found it boring, cold and repetitive. Maybe too many topics were covered and not enough word count devoted to each. Towards the end it did feel like she was trying to squeeze in as many people as possible just to have included them. There were also repeat references to certain people and it felt at times as thought I was reading the same thing twice so maybe the overall structure needed to be looked at and fine-tuned.
I totally believed that this book would be a #ontheshelf book to refer to at various points when homework or random conversations sparked the need. I'd even cleared a space for it in the read section of my little library. However I disliked the book so much that I've decided it's going nowhere near my shelf – I have Google if I need to answer who Athene was and 30 or more unread books that are more worthy of the space.
I realised pretty early on however that this wasn’t going to be the book that allowed me to do that and fell out of love with it once I realised the introduction was pretty much the theme for the rest of the book.
I didn’t like the way the book was presented – for example (sorry if this is a stupid question but having read 500 plus pages I still don't know) do some people actually believe this is how the world started? Virgil, Homer and all the other people she quoted, were they just waxing lyrical or is it them explaining what they believed to be a true account of how Athens came about or how a constellation came into being? This wasn’t made clear to the reader. Some sort of background/introduction to Virgil, Homer etc. would have been useful to help put their works into context. There wasn't any kind of conclusion either, in fact I found the ending quite abrupt (I actually turned the page expecting to see more). What happened to all these Gods that the author spent 500 pages naming?
That brings me to my next point – names – how many! The book literally read like this 'A married B and they had C, D and E. C met F and raped her to produce G. D had sex with E then with H and I and had 3 sons J, K and L. K married M who killed K and then married N. N was murdered by D. M murdered D in revenge and then killed herself in grief for her lost husband. And that’s just one paragraph!
That is pretty much what the book is, a list of people having sex (consensual or not), having children, killing (each other or themselves) or turning into trees, rivers, animals and so forth. I get that that is in essence what the Gods did but it was too list like. I wanted little things like why Helen is known as the face that launched a thousand ships, or why we wear laurel wreaths as a sign of victory to stand out rather than be swamped amongst the endless names. What made it more difficult was the fact all of the names were unfamiliar to me – Apollo yes I've heard him before but add Kynossema, Apsyrtos and Anaxarete in to the mix and you can appreciate why it was hard to remember who was who. Again I understand the author couldn’t suddenly start calling everyone Dave (that too would have been confusing) but she needed to someway make them memorable, more recognisable instead of another name beginning with A whose face made Zeus fall in love with her in an instant.
What a randy bugger Zeus was by the way and how much of a bitch was his wife? See I wanted more of that!
It's not that the book went over my head. I just found it boring, cold and repetitive. Maybe too many topics were covered and not enough word count devoted to each. Towards the end it did feel like she was trying to squeeze in as many people as possible just to have included them. There were also repeat references to certain people and it felt at times as thought I was reading the same thing twice so maybe the overall structure needed to be looked at and fine-tuned.
I totally believed that this book would be a #ontheshelf book to refer to at various points when homework or random conversations sparked the need. I'd even cleared a space for it in the read section of my little library. However I disliked the book so much that I've decided it's going nowhere near my shelf – I have Google if I need to answer who Athene was and 30 or more unread books that are more worthy of the space.
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