Starred review from February 1, 2025
A fantasy novelist reimagines the myth of Dionysus. Pulley's intricately plotted fantasy novels have explored the past couple hundred years, the near(ish) future, and alternate versions of both. In her new novel, she goes back millennia further to Bronze Age Thebes. The protagonist, Phaidros, is one of the Sown, an elite fighting force named after knights said to have sprouted from a dragon's teeth. The Sown are organized in pairs: a commander and his ward, whom he raises and trains, then sometimes marries. (Married couples and devoted family pairs will fight like the gods to keep each other alive, the thinking goes.) Phaidros' commander is Helios, a royal prince. When Queen Agave, Helios' sister, tries to kill their other sister's blue-eyed baby nephew (said to be a son of Zeus, but that's what people always say about illegitimate children), 5-year-old Phaidros helps Helios whisk the entrancing baby away to safety. Years later, Phaidros encounters a blue-eyed adolescent who turns sailors into dolphins, and then--years later yet--a blue-eyed man named Dionysus who makes fruit and vines grow in the middle of a drought. Are they the same person? Is this the illegitimate prince come back for revenge? Is his father really Zeus, after all? Is he a god himself, or just an ordinary witch (a magical healer)? Is it safe for Phaidros to love him? Must Phaidros choose between compassion and duty--and will he choose right? Pulley brings out her favorite elements--palace intrigue, gallant lovers, masks, transformations, ambiguity, automata--and twists them into mesmerizing patterns. Though she draws extensively on mythological source material, the novel feels more like fantasy than the myth-come-to-life realism of retellings such as those by Madeline Miller. This love story is witty, bittersweet, surprising, and compellingly readable.
COPYRIGHT(2025) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Starred review from March 1, 2025
After her foray into the future in The Mars House (2024), Pulley takes readers back in time to ancient Thebes to chronicle the unlikely love story between a Theban soldier and a god living among mortals. Phaidros has been raised in the Theban army by the brother of Queen Agave. Loyal and dedicated to a fault, Phaidros has only defied his family once, when he saved a baby boy from the queen's wrath. Years later, Phaidros encounters the boy again, but this time the child saves himself from the Theban army, leaving Phaidros wracked with guilt over his inability to protect him. This child is a witch, and his name is Dionysus. Their paths cross again as adults during a catastrophic drought and famine. Phaidros is tasked with hunting down Agave's runaway son, while Dionysus uses his magic to heal. But even as Phaidros falls deeply in love with Dionysus, he starts to fear that the bewitching healer may be the cause of the madness that is sweeping through Thebes and causing terrifying transformations from man into beast. Amid a plethora of retellings of ancient Greek and Roman tales, it's Pulley's utterly unique and outrageously candid and witty hero Phaidros that makes this captivating yarn and its beautiful love story a standout.
COPYRIGHT(2025) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
