Elektra: The mesmerising story of Troy from the three women its heart

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For readers who are familiar with the Classics and/or enjoy the plethora of retellings revolving around the Trojan War, it should not surprise you that there is not much about the Trojan War itself in the retellings that will strike you as completely new. Each main character of this book is very well narrated by Beth Eyre, Jane Collingwood and Julie Teal. Next we have Cassandra the princess of Troy who upon refusing the god Apollo’s advances was cursed to be able to foretell the future but never be believed.

Elizabeth Lee, author of CUNNING WOMEN Elektra tells the stories of three women as each battles to forge her own destiny. to have been kidnapped by Agamemnon because the place she lives in now is so pretty and a palace like the one Cassandra grew up in and how being raped by a king (especially one like her fantastic father) is such an honor. Yes, I was surprised because we are talking about Elektra and her mother, Clytemnestra; can't love them both, every time you should hate one of them, but not in this book! There is dramatic irony to it, as Elektra is reflecting on this the chapter after Cassandra commits suicide (well, successfully begs someone to kill her), but Elektra’s narrative weight, given to her by her equal pagetime to the others and her status as the titular character, makes it feel like the reader is supposed to care for and empathize with her. Her second novel, ELEKTRA, comes out in 2022 and is another retelling of Greek mythology told in the voices of the women at the heart of the ancient legends.I like Greek mythology, so I liked it okay, and I have no problem with a retelling as long as it is done well. The sister of Helen, wife of Agamemnon – her hopes of averting the curse are dashed when her sister is taken to Troy by the feckless Paris.

If you don’t know much about these legendary tales then this would not be a problem, but for me I wanted a bit more originality in the whole story and I wanted more twists to a story I already knew. There couldn't be a better opening sentence for me, I was instantly hooked and couldn't put the book down. Though the title would have you thinking this story is centered on one woman, it actually follows three separate women during the time of the Trojan War. I feel like Saint's retellings just follow the original texts too closely, but that's on me, not her. There was much of this that I loved- Jennifer Saint has wrote another fantastic retelling and I enjoyed how certain aspects she’s twisted to suit her own narrative.Though they had more agency than they do in the myths, they lacked any real complexity after the start of the Trojan War. ClytemnestraThe sister of Helen, wife of Agamemnon - her hopes of averting the curse are dashed when her sister is taken to Troy by the feckless Paris.

Clytemnestra and Elektra’s stories are inextricably entwined, but Cassandra is an outlier; she’s present in Troy during the fighting, which is presumably why Saint included her—Clytemnestra and Elektra are too far removed from the main action—but she doesn’t feel like an organic part of the story. Circetells the story of the witch that Odysseus meets on his journey home, so it is more Odyssey than Iliad, but it is still very much worth reading.

How does one get to the point where the murder of your own mother seems not only reasonable but morally necessary?

Saint really knows how to create a wonderful story that really puts you into the pages of the book, I got so lost in it I could barely put it down once I had started. Yes, she intersects them at the end, but it is so brief that it does feel like enough justification for her presence. They picked over her reputation like vultures, scavenging for every scrap of flesh they could devour.We read her terrible curse from Apollo as she refuses him to rape her (literally whenever Apollo appears on the scene in any myth you know someone will be sexually assaulted). And having recently read A Thousand Ships and The Women of Troy, maybe it was just too much similar. If the whole book had been as powerful as Clytemnestra’s sections, I likely would have been satisfied. But the long periods of waiting between events, the awkwardly chosen POVs, and the unspectacular writing left me fairly cold. It was also not the lack of "magic" (the only supernatural thing was Apollo spitting into Cassandra's mouth).