Her life seems like paradise for a while, but as time goes on she becomes increasingly uncomfortable with Dionysus’s rapidly expanding cult and growing taste for violence. Over the next fifteen years, she gives birth to five sons while Dionysus goes out on regular voyages to court new followers. She initially agrees to be his resident priestess, but their relationship evolves, and eventually they marry. She is on the point of starvation when Dionysus unexpectedly arrives on her doorstep and befriends her. Theseus in turn shows his gratitude by abandoning both girls Phaedra is left on Crete, while Ariadne is marooned on the uninhabited island of Naxos. Ariadne and Phaedra both fall head over heels in love with him, and they give him what he needs to kill the Minotaur and then escape with the uneaten tributes. In the third year of its indemnity, Athens sends fourteen children as usual, but this time their number includes Theseus, the boastful crown prince of Athens. After he breaks out of his pen, the Minotaur is imprisoned in a labyrinth beneath the palace, and every year feeds on the fourteen children sent by the city of Athens as payment for the death of Ariadne’s brother Androgeos. Ariadne tries her best to love her half-brother, but finds this increasingly difficult as the Minotaur grows more dangerous.
Her childhood is abruptly derailed when Poseidon brainwashes Pasiphaë into having sex with a bull, which results in the birth of the Minotaur. The thing is, because she chose this particular myth, and because she also chose not to modify the ending, there was only so much she could do with it, and the end result doesn’t really seem to fit with the loftiness of the cover blurb.īorn in Crete to King Minos and Queen Pasiphaë, Ariadne is raised in wealth and comfort alongside her younger sister, Phaedra, and several other siblings. And I have to give Saint her due: she is grimly faithful to the original mythology in almost every aspect of the story.
(I feel like I should note that a large part of this is not really the author’s fault, but it also kind of is.) I think the trouble is that I went into this expecting something inventive, such as Madeline Miller’s incomparable Circe, but instead found a fairly straightforward retelling of the stories of Ariadne and Phaedra of Crete.
If the names and vocabulary are confusing, Google is your friend. I’m not explaining what the Minotaur is or drawing an Olympian family tree.
NOTE: I’m assuming a basic level of familiarity with Greek mythology.
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