An autumnal read

I am a so-called hard Sci-Fic reader, and also a so-called hard Fantasy reader, which basically means I have no problem with magic and bug-eyed monsters and the like, as long as you present them in a generally believable manner. If, for example, your world has "ta da! Magic!" and you've got a city that needs a bridge, you better have a reason why they can't go "ta da! Bridge!" Bad example, but you get the point...trying not to point fingers.

I generally do not read revisionist mythology, feminist retellings of classics and the like, because often these books seem so implausible to me that I just can't get into them. My brain needs things to fall into a generally logical order or I just can't get into it. I try to solve the problem of why the book makes no sense instead of enjoying a good yarn...just like if I encountered something that seemed illogical in real life I'd try to solve that problem...it's what I do.

So a book that has the phrase "lesbian revisionist retelling" in it is generally not something I expect to work for me. I generally loathe when someone takes the great love stories of our world (for example) and suddenly both characters are women. To use an example of what I hope has never existed, if you re-did Jane Eyre and made Mr. Rochester into Ms. Rochester, you'd need to explain to me how in the name of all that's holy Ms. Rochester would be holding all the power of Mr. Rochester in 1847 England...Seriously, just "she dressed like a man and people assumed she was one" would not work...I'd spend the whole time wondering what the holy fuck. This was a time period even more repressive than the one that fucked over Oscar Wilde and "she dressed like a man and people assumed she was one" would not fucking work and would cheapen the stories of real Lesbians AND real transgendered people at that point in time...and now I'm mad about a book that I don't think exists.

Anyway...

Similarly, as a polytheist, I generally find myself strongly disliking God in a Dress henotheism, where there are many gods of many genders but only one Goddess, who acts just like the Christian god, so a book whose back matter reads: "Three thousand years ago, a god told a lie. Now, only a goddess can tell the truth." is similarly something that you could expect me to pass on. Bear in mind I minored in Classics, so most such books make me crazy, because they paint a character that's not merely nothing like the collective gnosis of their culture, but worse, do so in an unbelievable way.

I want you to ignore these completely true statements on the back matter. If you react to "lesbian revisionist retelling" like it is nails on a chalkboard and "only a goddess can tell the truth" like it's microphone feedback, forget that they exist and go get a copy of The Dark Wife.

It is a retelling of the Persephone in the Underworld myth, where Hades is a woman, and Zeus is an asshole, and the relationship between Persephone and Hades is consensual and yes, totally same-sex...and before my fellow Hellenic polytheists get offended at that, none of Zeus' behavior is outside of the body of myth, and the book manages to convey that even if Zeus is over the top as a bad guy, it might be because the stories you've heard about Zeus are biased in his favor, and this one is biased against him...since part of the story does revolve around manipulating people with the myths you get them to tell, the back of your mind does remind you that anything that seems too perfect, or too evil, might be because Persephone is telling the tale with her own need for a little propaganda.

The underworld, Zeus, and the rest are not tainted by Christianity. Often in such "lesbian revisionist retellings," the author fails to resist the temptation to poke at Christianity, and a lesser author than Sarah Diemer would've made a Zeus that looked like Christianity's deity, and an Underworld that looks like Hell. Again, Zeus' behavior is right in-line with the mythos, and the underworld, where a lot of the dead just sort of hang there, with nothing to do but remember, is a completely Hellenic view, not a Christian one.

I found the book literally so beautiful in places I broke down and had to stop reading, but still read it in one sitting. I don't generally do book reviews, but I was so moved by this book I wanted to encourage my friends and family to give it a chance.