This love story is witty, bittersweet, surprising, and compellingly readable.
A fantasy novelist reimagines the myth of Dionysus.
Pulley’s intricately plotted fantasy novels have explored the past couple hundred years, the near(ish) future, and alternate versions of both. In her new novel, she goes back millennia further to Bronze Age Thebes. The protagonist, Phaidros, is one of the Sown, an elite fighting force named after knights said to have sprouted from a dragon’s teeth. The Sown are organized in pairs: a commander and his ward, whom he raises and trains, then sometimes marries. (Married couples and devoted family pairs will fight like the gods to keep each other alive, the thinking goes.) Phaidros’ commander is Helios, a royal prince. When Queen Agave, Helios’ sister, tries to kill their other sister’s blue-eyed baby nephew (said to be a son of Zeus, but that’s what people always say about illegitimate children), 5-year-old Phaidros helps Helios whisk the entrancing baby away to safety. Years later, Phaidros encounters a blue-eyed adolescent who turns sailors into dolphins, and then—years later yet—a blue-eyed man named Dionysus who makes fruit and vines grow in the middle of a drought. Are they the same person? Is this the illegitimate prince come back for revenge? Is his father really Zeus, after all? Is he a god himself, or just an ordinary witch (a magical healer)? Is it safe for Phaidros to love him? Must Phaidros choose between compassion and duty—and will he choose right? Pulley brings out her favorite elements—palace intrigue, gallant lovers, masks, transformations, ambiguity, automata—and twists them into mesmerizing patterns. Though she draws extensively on mythological source material, the novel feels more like fantasy than the myth-come-to-life realism of retellings such as those by Madeline Miller.
This love story is witty, bittersweet, surprising, and compellingly readable.Pub Date: March 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781639732364
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2025
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.
The Medusa myth, reimagined as an Afrocentric, feminist tale with the Gorgon recast as avenging hero.
In mythological Greece, where gods still have a hand in the lives of humans, 17-year-old Medusa lives on an island with her parents, old sea gods who were overthrown at the rise of the Olympians, and her sisters, Euryale and Stheno. The elder sisters dote on Medusa and bond over the care of her “locs...my dearest physical possession.” Their idyll is broken when Euryale is engaged to be married to a cruel demi-god. Medusa intervenes, and a chain of events leads her to a meeting with the goddess Athena, who sees in her intelligence, curiosity, and a useful bit of rage. Athena chooses Medusa for training in Athens to become a priestess at the Parthenon. She joins the other acolytes, a group of teenage girls who bond, bicker, and compete in various challenges for their place at the temple. As an outsider, Medusa is bullied (even in ancient Athens white girls rudely grab a Black girl’s hair) and finds a best friend in Apollonia. She also meets a nameless boy who always seems to be there whenever she is in need; this turns out to be Poseidon, who is grooming the inexplicably naïve Medusa. When he rapes her, Athena finds out and punishes Medusa and her sisters by transforming their locs into snakes. The sisters become Gorgons, and when colonizing men try to claim their island, the killing begins. Telling a story of Black female power through the lens of ancient myth is conceptually appealing, but this novel published as adult fiction reads as though intended for a younger audience.
An engaging, imaginative narrative hampered by its lack of subtlety.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9780593733769
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2025
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.
A lifetime’s worth of letters combine to portray a singular character.
Sybil Van Antwerp, a cantankerous but exceedingly well-mannered septuagenarian, is the titular correspondent in Evans’ debut novel. Sybil has retired from a beloved job as chief clerk to a judge with whom she had previously been in private legal practice. She is the divorced mother of two living adult children and one who died when he was 8. She is a reader of novels, a gardener, and a keen observer of human nature. But the most distinguishing thing about Sybil is her lifelong practice of letter writing. As advancing vision problems threaten Sybil’s carefully constructed way of life—in which letters take the place of personal contact and engagement—she must reckon with unaddressed issues from her past that threaten the house of cards (letters, really) she has built around herself. Sybil’s relationships are gradually revealed in the series of letters sent to and received from, among others, her brother, sister-in-law, children, former work associates, and, intriguingly, literary icons including Joan Didion and Larry McMurtry. Perhaps most affecting is the series of missives Sybil writes but never mails to a shadowy figure from her past. Thoughtful musings on the value and immortal quality of letters and the written word populate one of Sybil’s notes to a young correspondent while other messages are laugh-out-loud funny, tinged with her characteristic blunt tartness. Evans has created a brusque and quirky yet endearing main character with no shortage of opinions and advice for others but who fails to excavate the knotty difficulties of her own life. As Sybil grows into a delayed self-awareness, her letters serve as a chronicle of fitful growth.
An affecting portrait of a prickly woman.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9780593798430
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
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