Circe

22.02.2021

Welcome back to my blog, that has now turned into reading only Greek mythology novels. Anyway, this was the next one I read. After reading "The song of Achilles" and falling in love with it, I took a look at Madeline and her other novels and found this gem, immediately putting it on my books to read list. I just got around to reading it, and I am ready to share with you my thoughts on it.

As you may have guessed by the title, this book talks about the life story of Circe, daughter of the titan of the sun Helios and Perse, daughter of the mighty titan Oceanus. Strangely enough, Circe is different. She is not strong and dominant like her father, nor alluring and captivating like her mother. She spends her "childhood", if we can call it that way considering she is immortal, like an outcast, shy and always in the corner minding her own business. Of her three other siblings, Pesiphae, Perses and Aeetes, she is close only with the latter. After her father sends off all his children to different lands, Circe is again alone in the big halls. She falls in love with a mortal sailor called Glaicus and decides to make him immortal, so they could be together forever. Surprisingly, she succeeds, but after becoming a god, Glaicus abandons her for the nymph Scylla, who is later turned into a monster by Circe. Circe admits her use of dark magic to her father, who is summoned by Zeus and informed that his daughter must now face the consequences of her actions. She is therefore sent into exile on the island of Aiaia. She actually gets accustomed to her new life fairly well, she starts practicing more magic and gets really good at it. From then on start all the other adventures she faces, like being allowed by the gods to go visit her sister in Crete, where she witnesses the birth of the Minotaur and meets the famous architect Deadalus. After going back to Aiaia she starts a new practice. Every time sailors go and seek refugee on her island and decide to take advantage of her, as she is "just a woman" she turns them all into guinea pigs. One day, perhaps for her, it was just a normal one, a new bunch of sailors arrive, whom she turns to pigs quickly, their captain comes in afterwards, and that is how Circe gets to know Odysseus. She turns his men back into humans, and they stay on her island for a whole year. Odysseus and Circe get to know each other and end up becoming lovers, despite him having a wife. He tells her all of his stories, about the Trojan war and about his adventures on the way home and in return she tells him hers. After his departure Circe finds out she is pregnant and raises a good but rebellious son named Telegonus. But now Telegonus is 16 and wishes to go visit his father, who he ends up killing in a misunderstanding. He comes back to Aiaia with Penelope and Telemachus, his half-brother, and they all spend some time there. Telegonus goes to found a new city in Italy with the help of Athena and Circe finally decides to put a stop to her exile. She sets out on a completely new adventure with Telemachus, what will happen on it?

Star rating: I decided to give this book 4 stars, there wasn't anything bad about it, I just felt like it wasn't emblematic enough like some of the other books that I've rated with five stars in order to receive them all.