The daring, dazzling and highly anticipated follow-up to the New York Times best seller The Song of Achilles
One of the Most Anticipated Books of 2018
“An epic spanning thousands of years that’s also a keep-you-up-all-night page turner.” (Ann Patchett)
In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child – not powerful, like her father, nor viciously alluring, like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power – the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves.
Threatened, Zeus banishes her to a deserted island, where she hones her occult craft, tames wild beasts and crosses paths with many of the most famous figures in all of mythology, including the Minotaur; Daedalus and his doomed son, Icarus; the murderous Medea; and, of course, wily Odysseus.
But there is danger, too, for a woman who stands alone, and Circe unwittingly draws the wrath of both men and gods, ultimately finding herself pitted against one of the most terrifying and vengeful of the Olympians. To protect what she loves most, Circe must summon all her strength and choose, once and for all, whether she belongs with the gods she is born from or the mortals she has come to love.
With unforgettably vivid characters, mesmerizing language and pause-resisting suspense, Circe is a triumph of storytelling, an intoxicating epic of family rivalry, palace intrigue, and love and loss as well as a celebration of indomitable female strength in a man’s world.
Glitters with Magic and Love Iâve been waiting for Circe since I closed the endpapers of The Song of Achilles. Miller has the expertâs eye and a storytellerâs touch – a female storyteller at that, which makes her remarkable among the other writers and rewriters of the classic Greek tales.Here, her gifts are used in telling the story of Circe, child of Helios and one of the lesser gods, the first witch of the world. She spins a tale of bravery, gullibility, fear and courage; she tells the tale of a goddess who…
Circe’s Apologia? I was never a Greek mythology scholar and and most of what I once knew from required reading at school has been lost to a faulty memory. What I’m now left with is very general, sketchy knowledge. Take Circe, for example. She’s still there in my memory bank, but just broadly as a witchy woman living on an island who turned Odysseus’ men into pigs when they stopped off on their way home to Ithaca after the Trojan War.Author Madeline Miller, who is an actual classics scholar, fills…
This will go on my âBest of the Yearâ list. Brief summary, no spoilers.I know it may be odd to talk about âspoilersâ when this is the story of a mythological character, but there are reasons for that and I will explain in the review.This book is told from the point of view of Circe, daughter of the sun Titan Helios. Her mother was Perse, a sea nymph who was the granddaughter of the Titan Oceanos.We mainly know of Circe from the Odyssey and her interactions with Odysseus. She was known as a sorceress…