Wrath Goddess Sing, Maya Deane

[cyphomandra]

"What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture.” - Thomas Browne

This is a retelling of the Iliad with Achilles as a trans woman, and, like all the retellings, some bits of it work better for me than others. It starts with Achilles on Skyros, an island home to many other trans women (kallai), where they use herbs to suppress male hormones and where Achilles has achieved some sort of peace after the relentless bullying and abuse she suffered as a child/young adult. This refuge is ripped away from her when Diomedes and Odysseus track her down, but she receives a divine gift from Athena where her body is transformed to match her true self, and it is in this form that she fights the Trojan War.

It’s a fascinating & bold take on Achilles, and it works well with the text. Deane keeps the gods as well, which I always like in Iliad retellings (although there are some alterations, e.g. Achilles’ parentage), and adds an original character, Meryapi, an Egyptian princess married to Achilles’ cousin (!) Patroclus, who is great and who brings yet another perspective to the story.

I’m less keen on shortening the course of the war - it’s over in months at most, and these characters haven’t been ground down by the years of fighting over the same small patches of ground. It means Achilles has no space to mature. I’m very unkeen on Achillles and Agamemnon getting together for many, many reasons, but eventually I managed to mostly edge past that. Helen as the ultimate villain felt flat; she’s a hard character to do well, but this wasn’t particularly fresh. But what, oddly, I ended up being most unhappy with was the ending. The Iliad for me is a tragedy; it’s about the inevitability of death, and how we approach that, and so I muttered grumpily through the last chapter and it coloured the rest of the book a bit.

However. I did enjoy it; it’s engaging, even when I disagree with certain decisions. The book has, unfortunately, fallen foul of the strand of ownvoices critique that picks greedily over anything with GLBT+ characters looking for missteps, as well as constantly (perhaps wilfully) failing to comprehend the concept that depiction does not equal endorsement. It’s not as bad as the Isabel Fall incident, but it’s disturbing.

(one thing I would warn for that you might not expect from familiarity with the source material is a graphic birth scene)

Comments

[sovay]

The Iliad for me is a tragedy; it’s about the inevitability of death, and how we approach that, and so I muttered grumpily through the last chapter and it coloured the rest of the book a bit.

. . . What does this novel do with the ending?

[cyphomandra]

Death but with take-backs (also a massive space battle with Helen driven away (possibly imprisoned in a comet?) but not defeated).

[sovay]

(also a massive space battle with Helen driven away (possibly imprisoned in a comet?) but not defeated)

I didn't see the space battle coming.

(I wrote a poem about female Achilles once. It was not published online, or I would link.)

[cyphomandra]

Oh, I would love to read it! Female Achilles as a concept is fantastic, and it was one of the strengths of this book.

[luzula]

The space battle and comet and ancient Greek setting has now associated this book/post with this one in my mind... : D

[cyphomandra]

Sadly no tentacle monsters :D