Elektra
A spellbinding reimagining of the story of Elektra, one of Greek mythology’s most infamous heroines, from Jennifer Saint, the author of the beloved international bestseller, Ariadne.
Three women, tangled in an ancient curse.
When Clytemnestra marries Agamemnon, she ignores the insidious whispers about his family line, the House of Atreus. But when, on the eve of the Trojan War, Agamemnon betrays Clytemnestra in the most unimaginable way, she must confront the curse that has long ravaged their family.
In Troy, Princess Cassandra has the gift of prophecy, but carries a curse of her own: no one will ever believe what she sees. When she is shown what will happen to her beloved city when Agamemnon and his army arrives, she is powerless to stop the tragedy from unfolding.
Elektra, Clytemnestra and Agamemnon’s youngest daughter, wants only for her beloved father to return home from war. But can she escape her family’s bloody history, or is her destiny bound by violence, too?
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Community Reviews
Elektra is whiny, so up her father's ass that she's somehow completely unable to feel any sadness about her sisters brutal murder, but also is able to justify and even support her father taking literal sex slaves? And not only justify, but manage to hate her mother for daring to express sympathy (or acknowledge that they are... you know, humans) for the women Agamemnon has wronged. She was honestly annoying to read.
Cassandra is a non-character. Her POV chapters are just convenient exposition, she isn't really given any agency, her character just kind of... drifts along commenting on what's going on around her until she dies. Probably the worst part of this story is that she asks Clytemnestra to kill her.
Clytemnestra.... I will give Saint credit in that I think her portrayal of Clytemnestra in the first half of the novel is one of the better I've seen. I think she did a good job making this character sympathetic by really getting into her grief and anger. However, after the murder of Agamemnon I just don't think the character was written particularly interesting. She basically just waits around for the scene when she'll eventually be killed. She's just kind of.... there?
I don't know. Maybe if I didn't love this story so much I wouldn't be so disappointed by Saint's version. But since I've been obsessed with this particular myth since I read the Oresteia in college, that I can't really forgive an author making it.... kind of boring.
My final thoughts are - you can't really just call something a 'feminist retelling' just because it centers around female characters. Its not feminist to craft a narrative that takes three iconic female characters and flattens them to one-dimension. It's not feminist to center a story around three women and then give them no agency, no real emotion, no real characterization. It's also not particularly feminist to name your book after the POV character who justifies the murder of her sister, the taking of women as literal sex slaves/spoils of war, and hatred of her own mother because she just... loves her daddy so much.
Can you call it a feminist retelling if ancient greek playwrights gave these women more complexity and agency than you did?
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