Book Review: "Ariadne" by Jennifer Saint

Fantasy novels based within myths are more than often somewhat unimaginative. It can really go one of two ways. The first way it can go is that it can rethink the entire story, adding imagined events which are filled with thought-provoking scenes of extreme emotion. The other way it can go is that it can basically just copy the myth whilst adding in scenes in which characters reflect on various things and so, if you did not know about the myth to begin with - it becomes just some sort of exercise in futility. The dreaded and often less common third road it can go down is that it is a weird mash up of the two. We get the unimaginative retelling that is basically something we could find on google if we typed the myth in and, it is told in a way that is completely unemotional and filled with things that would either make the reader feel inclined to look on google for the actual myth, or insult the reader’s intelligence. When I first read the book “Ariadne” by Jennifer Saint, I was very cautious because of the greek myth retellings I had been fed before and the way that they, after a while, became almost a cliché. And with these clichés in mind, I was keeping my eyes open. Though, I am struck to say that I did not really find very many.

The beginning of the book was a cliché. The whole first page. But after that, we can almost see the reader becoming more confident in what they are writing. Ariadne is no longer just telling us her story of her and her siblings, but she is reliving every single emotion. From the analysis of her mother and father, to the birth of the dreaded minotaur - we are met around each corner with extreme senses of emotion, extreme scenes in which Ariadne is forced to become a mother-figure and a sister-figure at the same time. The feelings that she has towards her little brother, the minotaur, are incredible and when he is finally referred to as ‘the minotaur’ there is this long paragraph about the way in which she not just feels sorry for him, but has this strange emotion of wanting to protect him as well. The fact that people are now being gathered up to be fed to the minotaur only makes her more cautious in the fact that she, at first, feels the maze is a threat - but tries her best to use it as a means of trying to forget this monster she has as a brother. It is only when dear Theseus comes along that she must be forced to choose.

Not a retelling though sometimes predictable (because what do you expect? It is the Theseus and the Minotaur myth - you’ve read it before), this book seeks to explore the vengeance that lurks inside the women of the greek myths. Ariadne does this thing where she analyses the positions of women such as Medusa and how they have been punished for the wrongs of men towards them. A sort of reference to victim blaming in rape culture, this book puts itself on the map as being made of mythical women of old with modern thought and wants for individual power. I honestly hope with all my heart that this is going to be part of a series, because the writing and its emotion is only the beginning of these great monologues of story that we get told from the point of view of women we have never even met. It is brilliant.