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The plot could have been solved within one day since the arrival of the girls, and there was no reason for it not happening because the characters couldn't possibly have been presented as selfish or get any sort of development that would lead to the obstacles in the beginning and their disappearance by the end. I’m sure there were plenty of inaccuracies I missed and even so, the anachronisms and instances of downright revisionist history are too numerous to name.
One thing I was very pleased about was the ending – I thought it might end all happily, but it didn’t, and I liked that. A reclamation of a story from thousands of years ago, Lies We Sing to the Sea is about love and fate, grief and sacrifice, and, ultimately, the power we must find within.
A fantasy romance, by dazzling new talent Sarah Underwood, inspired by Greek mythology and the tale of Penelope’s twelve hanged maids. But one girl wasn't willing to go without a fight, and the curse she enacts on Ithaca will cause thousands more deaths, for generations to come. the primary reason these relationships were not treated with as much validity as heterosexual or male-male homosexual relationships was because the classical Greek thinkers—themselves all men—did not believe women were capable of love to the degree that men were; ergo, the “ideal” love relationship would be between two (or more) men. I’m never going to get direct experience of living in Ancient Greece, but you learn about interpersonal relationships at university, which you can adapt and lift and put into your novels. And she has the gall to confidently claim that there's been no retelling of The Odyssey that portrays Penelope as complex and not blameless, as if Margaret Atwood were a nobody that never wrote a Penelopiad years before this author was around.
All the awesome lesbian, trans, or queer characters in the world will not fix the problems I have with this girls lack of respect for the origin story, the legacy of it, and that she doesn’t get to just rip-off the parts of any story she wants. The 103 third parties who use cookies on this service do so for their purposes of displaying and measuring personalized ads, generating audience insights, and developing and improving products. Frequently, Mathias notes the wealth of Athens and how marriage to his betrothed will bring some financial prosperity to Ithaca. who then washes up on a beach and meets Melantho, another girl turned into one of Poseidon’s creatures who is in charge of training the spared girl to fight and kill a prince (Queue training montages!The extent to which the story is faithful or "accurate" to the original is one issue to consider, but it is not the only issue.
What it *did* feel like was direct response to Margaret Atwood's The Penleopiad to an uncanny degree. The writing style is very basic - in fact, there was a very dramatic scene played totally straight that was written exactly as the "Shrek Fiona DONKEY! But when Leto awakens from her death on the shore of a long-forgotten island, its enigmatic keeper Melantho tells her that there's only one way the curse can be broken. The pacing, as I said earlier, is a bit off and it sped up in the last 20ish %, with "new" revelations (I saw them coming from ages, but never mind), memories and sex fading to black.I was yelling at my Kindle over and over because that’s not how that works or that’s completely unrealistic.
As I've said before, they felt a bit expected, sometimes making me groan and roll my eye, other facepalming myself. melantho almost dies like three times throughout the novel, so it’s no surprise when she dies at the end. Certain scenes contradict each other and plot revelations are even repeated, as if the characters and the readers weren’t already aware! Gorgeous, tragic, and timeless, Underwood’s LIES WE SING TO THE SEA makes an age-old story feel new again. That’s what’s great about them—they have those layers of depth that can be unpacked when you read them again.Almost as soon Leto is on Ithaca she "falls" for the prince, blushing, flirting, her heart racing, finding kind and sweet and kissing him in various occasions. Leto is like no other heroine I've read, she is passionate, strong and genuine, she only wants revenge for what she suffered. Maas, and Naomi Novik all pay very intelligent nods back to their ‘retellings’ original source material (not just the Disney versions). you can tell this woman has not actually read any other “retellings” of the Odyssey (despite her claim that none exist.
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