Ratings15
Average rating3.7
Seventeen years ago, King Odysseus sailed to war with Troy, taking with him every man of fighting age from the island of Ithaca. None of them has returned, and the women of Ithaca have been left behind to run the kingdom.
Penelope was barely into womanhood when she wed Odysseus. While he lived, her position was secure. But now, years on, speculation is mounting that her husband is dead, and suitors are beginning to knock at her door.
No one man is strong enough to claim Odysseus' empty throne—not yet. But everyone waits for the balance of power to tip, and Penelope knows that any choice she makes could plunge Ithaca into bloody civil war. Only through cunning, wit, and her trusted circle of maids, can she maintain the tenuous peace needed for the kingdom to survive.
This is the story of Penelope of Ithaca, famed wife of Odysseus, as it has never been told before. Beyond Ithaca’s shores, the whims of gods dictate the wars of men. But on the isle, it is the choices of the abandoned women—and their goddesses— that will change the course of the world.
Series
Featured Series
3 primary books#1 in The Songs of Penelope
The Songs of Penelope is a 3-book series with 3 primary works first released in 2022 with contributions by Claire North.
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Contains spoilers
It was fine. I read this with my book club, to be honest I probably would have DNF'd it otherwise. The main problem was that it just did not really capture my attention. The first part meanders a lot and does not have a clear storyline or compelling characters. The second part gets slightly better both the storylines with Clytaimnestra and the one about the raiders picked up a bit, but still there was not enough there to be really invested. I feel like the story would have been more interesting if we had Penelope's POV instead of Hera. It feels like the writer really wanted an all-knowing narrator, but Hera was just complaining about basically everyone else most of the time, which was at times entertaining, but other times too much and trying a bit too hard to be funny. I don't think there were a lot of storylines we could not have had with Penelope being the main character instead of Hera, possibly with some other character POV's sprinkled throughout. And the presence of the gods could instead be shown by characters catching glimpses of them or feeling their presence or something like that.
For me the interesting part of the story was how Penelope was pretending to be a "weak grieving wife" while secretly working behind the scenes with other women to save the island. I would have liked to have seen more of the sceming of Penelope and the women around her. My favorite bit was (not super spoilery):
"Ah," mutters Penelope. "I see. Medon, forgive me. I find myself overcome with womanly weakness and must retire." -"I have always admired the exquisite timing of your weaknesses my lady"
I really enjoyed this book. As the first installment of a series, you expect to have a fairly open-ended narrative that could reasonably continue, but I felt Ithaca did a nice job wrapping up the immediate story satisfactorily. The narrator being Hera was an unexpected but nice touch, allowing us to get a truly omnipotent view of the action with some snarky observations thrown in for good measure. Despite (or perhaps because of) her Goddess nature, Hera is an unreliable narrator, prone to favoritism and grudges, and this adds some interesting color to her interactions with the minor cast, especially Athena and Clytemnestra.
Penelope is a smart woman and a capable leader, but as a main character I felt I didn't get a great picture of her. Hopefully she comes into focus more in subsequent books.
