“She’s certain that nothing will happen. That she can relinquish her weary fidelity and the world will still have its goddess of wives, carved in wood and stone and ivory, set down in scrawled ink, trapped in song and verse forever.”
Rating: 5 stars
Release date: 23/05/2024
Publisher: Wildfire
Author: Jennifer Saint
The enthralling tale of a powerful Greek goddess maligned in both myth and ancient history, as told by Sunday Times bestselling author Jennifer Saint.
When Hera, immortal goddess and daughter of the ancient Titan Cronus, helps her brother Zeus to overthrow their tyrannical father, she dreams of ruling at his side.
As they establish their reign on Mount Olympus, Hera suspects that Zeus might be just as ruthless and cruel as the father they betrayed.
She was always born to rule, but must she lose herself in perpetuating this cycle of violence and cruelty? Or can she find a way to forge a better world?
Often portrayed as the jealous wife or the wicked stepmother, this retelling captures the many sides of Hera, vengeful when she needs to be but also compassionate and most importantly, an all-powerful queen to the gods.
Pushed to the wayside, Hera is most famous for being forgotten by Zeus. We know her story less than we know how she doesn’t fit into Zeus’. Like many others, I’m guilty of only knowing her as an angry wife (who can blame her). I loved discovering her story through Jennifer Saint’s writing.
I really liked how, unlike other Greek myth retellings, this didn’t focus on one key myth. We got a whole overview of the Greek God pantheon, from them overthrowing the Titans to falling out of worship in more modern days. I found it really interesting when the myths that usually get whole stories on their own were just mentioned in a paragraph or so, and I thought it was a really effective way of showing the different impact these events had on humans versus gods.
This book gave the opportunity to not only see the whole pantheon, with Gods, mortals and quests, but we also saw monsters. I didn’t know that Hera fit into their story before this, so I loved learning about that.
Jennifer Saint’s writing style is beautiful, lyrical and easy to understand. It can’t be easy to fit hundreds of godly years into a 400 page book, but Saint still manages to accessibly do so here.
Although I don’t think this book tried to excuse all the things Hera did to punish Zeus’ infidelity, it gives us the chance to understand her actions more. A lot of her anger stems from when Zeus tricked her, raped her, then promised her the world – but didn’t actually give her the latter. It’s easy to understand her frustration too as she watches Cronos’ other children get given the skies and the sea and the underworld, and Zeus’ illegitimate children also get given realms, when she has to beg for anything.
TLDR – Zeus is a dick and deserves everything coming to him (it’s just a shame Hera punishes him by punishing the people around him)
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