Atalanta

Main Review:

With the weather turning sunny once again over the past few weeks, it seemed the perfect time to get back to what this blog does best - lounging on the literary shores of ancient Greece with another mythic adaptation.

You might recall that Jennifer Saint has appeared on this blog before, back when I reviewed her first book Ariadne. At the time I found Ariadne to be enjoyable enough, if not exactly memorable. Somewhat to my shame, her second novel, Elektra, has sat languishing on my bookshelf for over a year, awaiting the alignment of the stars in such a way that I'd be driven to give it a go. Despite this less than stellar prior form, I found myself strangely compelled to pick up her latest offering – Atalanta – sooner rather than later.

My zealous enthusiasm could possibly be explained by the fact that I've always had a soft-spot for the champion of Artemis. But equally, I reckon it has something to do with the fact that I once made the connection that Michelle Rodriguez (of Dungeons and Dragons and Fast and the Furious fame) would be a fantastic option to play Atalanta on the big screen. As a result,  I was curious to see whether other people with less over-active imaginations might have had the same idea.

Suffice it to say, Saint was very much not singing from the same hymn sheet as me.

I’m not sure precisely how I expected the story to go, but right from the outset, I found her writing style to be blunt, almost storyboard-esque. There’s no sense of depth in the descriptions, even when introducing Artemis herself. For such a crucial and formative part of Atalanta’s story and character, I was expecting just a little bit more fanfare and oomph. Call me old-fashioned, but I reckon meeting a divine being would be slightly more momentous (and therefore worthy of more embellishment) than being introduced to someone in a taverna on a Thursday evening, which is what it feels like in Saint’s hands.

As I persevered, I started thinking that maybe I was to blame for my own lack of enjoyment. Perhaps, I thought, I was still swooning from how good She Who Became the Sun had been, and if I just muscled through a little bit more; Atalanta would find its stride and I'd start enjoying myself. But much like Sisyphus, I toiled and travailed to find something (anything!) exciting about the book to latch onto, but my labour was never to pay off.

One of the most crucial failings of the book is that Atalanta’s narrative voice does not feel even remotely distinct from either Ariadne or Phaedra in Saint’s previous work. Apparently, a woman raised by bears and chosen by the Great Huntress of the Olympians has exactly the same internal monologue as a Princess of Crete…. who knew? What makes this even more troubling is that, unlike Ariadne, there is no secondary protagonist to offer a change of pace or scenery or perspective. A part of me thought that Medea might fill this role, but even that hope was dashed on the Colchian rocks, a quibble that I will return to later.

For those who may not be aware, Atalanta is perhaps best known for being one of the Argonauts, the boat-based adventurers (led by Jason) who sail the Black Sea to go and retrieve the Golden Fleece. You will probably not be shocked to learn that Atalanta is the only female member of the team, because ancient bands of adventurers follow exactly the same composition rules as modern day super-hero rosters.

Having dawdled through the opening third of Atalanta’s arboreal life, I clung to a hope that this might be where the story started to set sail (pun very much intended). What follows will be familiar to anyone who has watched Wonder Woman (2017) recently. Atalanta is the quintessential ‘fish out of water’: unfamiliar with how cities work and constantly coming up against a wall of male bravado and chauvinism that seeks to deny her a place on the Argo, despite our Artemisian Girlboss™ effortlessly outclassing the men she intends to sail with. When Heracles was introduced, I thought we might have a chance to have a little nuance, to paint him as more than just ‘the big guy’, perhaps even having him be the first argonaut to welcome Atalanta into the crew without hesitation. No such luck. He’s entirely one-dimensional here, little more than a Grecian Gregor Clegane.

Throughout the book, I struggled to find myself invested in the events being depicted. At no point did I get even a little bit swept up in the story. The pacing of the book feels rushed and shallow, as if the whole thing is playing at 1.5x speed. As you might expect, this does not make for a dynamic reading experience. Her burgeoning relationship with Meleager is the biggest victim here, with their supposedly passionate affair feeling flat and stilted; a far cry from Zhu and Ma in She Who Became the Sun.

Now, back to Medea! As you might know, once Atalanta, Jason and crew make it to Colchis, they are supported in their attempts to acquire the Fleece by Medea, the Princess and unofficial Sorcerer Supreme of the city.  Unfortunately, all of Atalanta’s perceptions of Medea feel like they’re pre-emptively tainted by what the ancient Greek tragedians refer to as ‘that small incident in Corinth with the Dragon Chariot’ that, crucially, is very much yet to happen. From the moment she’s introduced, Atalanta bristles that this other woman is encroaching on her quest, and seems completely blind to the fact that without Medea, the acquisition of the Fleece is unlikely at best, if not outright impossible. I thought it a completely wasted opportunity to not really have these two powerful yet ostracised women actively interact in any meaningful way at any point in the story.

Following the conclusion of FleeceQuest, Atalanta finds herself unable to go back to her old life. Meleager dies unceremoniously, but not before getting Atalanta pregnant, forcing her to return to her father, the man who tried to kill her by leaving her in the forest at birth. Given the breakneck pace of the story, Meleager is barely out of the picture before Hippomenes comes back onto the scene, who might as well be wearing a neon-coloured tunic which says ‘I have unresolved romantic feelings for Atalanta’. Predictably, Atalanta falls for this ‘boy next door’ archetype on legs, and the pair eventually get married because gods forbid patriarchal norms be disrupted in any way shape or form. Oh, and then she gets turned into a literal lioness because she displeases Rhea – this is an ancient Greek myth after all.

You might say that some of my criticisms should be better levelled against the foundational elements of the Atalanta myth, rather than specifically against Saint’s story itself. But the trouble is, there’s simply no panache or style to what she has done with the story. Every fibre of this story feels like it’s been churned out, not out of real passion for the character, but out of an insatiable desire for ever more mythic adaptations to keep publishing houses and Book-Tok influencers in business. Despite its promising premise, Atalanta fails to deliver pretty much anything at all, and can best be summed up in one word:

Bland.

So, reader, heed my warning. If you spend more than a single moment with this book, you will be wasting your time. Go empty the dishwasher, put those clothes away – do literally anything else! And perhaps spare a moment to pity those who have already had precious hours of life sapped by its woeful mundanity.