Elektra: No.1 Sunday Times Bestseller from the Author of ARIADNE

Product Information

But we also get to see her as a mother before Troy and after, providing Cassandra with death to escape her torment (this scene was wrote really beautifully too despite it being about death). 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. This novel is pretty wonderful, especially in capturing the emotions and points of view of the female characters.

It's ironic that the character whose name is the title of this book is also the one I enjoyed the least and dreaded reading. Negative stuff: this book is still no better than Ariadne, but it at least got a little bit interesting after Agammemnon's death. My huge thanks to Headline Audio via NetGalley for giving me a chance to listen to Elektra by Jennifer Saint, I have given my honest review.There is no satisfaction here in this story, and I started getting so bored that I was sure I would DNF it.

Many of her actions and motivations might not feel justified but she is her father’s daughter and is unapologetic in her quest to avenge her father’s death and willing to sacrifice and bear the consequences of her actions. For example, in the way the women behaved, their curbed freedoms, even the way the names were spelled, which was somewhat inconsistent in Elektra, where the author chose only to spell er name with the "K" as would have been correct, but Clytemnestra and Cassandra with "Cs", though, as far as I know, there is not letter "c" in Greek. How could it be possible to rise every morning to that same grim, relentless slaughter, and then drink and sleep and wake to do it all again?She then spends the next 10 years planning to murder her husband when he comes home from Mycenae and see her trying to hold power in court. Our narrators are not on the battlefield and they don’t share the same loyalties or motivations - but Cassandra, Clytemnestra and Elektra are three women whose lives and destinies are irrevocably impacted by the events preceding, during and after the fall of Troy. The author does an excellent job of showing all the steps that led to the path this mother and daughter took and to the consequences that you know are inevitable. Now I recognize that I don't have to like any of the characters for the book to be good, and that some characters are written with the intention of being unlikable.

However, I loved the portrayal and depth of Agamemnon’s character in the book – not likeable but it was great to see more depth and colour to this very powerful character in Greek mythology. An exciting, lyrical new retelling of the trojan war stories from Jennifer Saint, the bestselling author of ELEKTRA (UK, Sunday Times, May 2022) and ARIADNE (UK, Sunday Times , April 2021). Clytemnestra and Elektra regularly hear stories from the front, and it is understood that the readers will be at least passingly familiar with Achilles and Agamemnon’s exploits. It is clear that Clytemnestra ignored her, which added to Elektra’s problems, but I find that Elektra should have been able to reach some reasonable conclusions to past events that she willfully chose to ignore.Also, Iphigenia's death scene was so gruesome and so well-done and Clytemnestra's raw pain after was quiet painful to read that I actually skimmed some because I couldn't handle the gore and grief anymore. An exciting, lyrical new retelling of the trojan war stories from Jennifer Saint, the bestselling author of ELEKTRA (UK, Sunday Times , May 2022) and ARIADNE (UK, Sunday Times , April 2021). It's a story about women in a patriarchal world with little power, trying to claw their way to some kind of agency in their own lives, only to find themselves caught in a cursed cycle of violence, trauma, revenge, and familial harm.