The prologue impressively evokes her despair and fury after waking alone on the shores of Naxos, abandoned by Theseus, her lover, after betraying her family for him. Zenobia Neil's Ariadne Unraveled: A Mythic Retelli.īest known in Greek mythology as the Princess of Crete who helped the Athenian prince Theseus escape the labyrinth and kill the Minotaur, her half-brother, Ariadne is given fresh treatment in this new retelling.Interview with Jeri Westerson about The Deadliest.Review of Diane Gaston's holiday-themed Regency ro.In Protector, Conn Iggulden continues his saga of.Best-of-year historical fiction roundups from arou.Isabel Allende's Violeta spans 100 years in a Sout.So, though lacking the wit that spiced up Levine's Sheba, it's a gloomily impressive piece of thee-philosophical reconstruction from a chiefly feminist angle. And finally Queen Ariadne, her followers nearly all gone, tries to tell the last of them: ''Without the Mother, we must all become the Mother.'' Some murky passages, some authentically poetic ones too-and Brindel's cross-references to the traditional myth (provided as an appendix) are often quite neat and elegant.

But the weakening of Ariadne's Earth-Goddess faith in ''the Mother'' allows dreadful changes to creep in: soldiers gather, and the key words of the cult-''Love'' and ''Compassion''-are transformed into ''Valor in Battle.'' Blasphemy and carnage ensue, with Theseus arriving in time to speak proudly of bloody deeds and desecration. Ariadne is in fact struggling to keep alive the cult of the Earth Goddess in the world, as great forces work against her: power-hungry Minos (the late Pasiphae's consort) is trying to insinuate Zeus worship and Daedalus, a sophisticated Athenian advisor, entices Ariadne into the arid ways of rationality, ''long caravans of reasoning purified from love and hate.'' So Ariadne finds herself succumbing to Daedalus' ideas, especially since she's joyfully in love with Daedalus' son Icarus (who'll die mysteriously, as if melted away). Crete (familiar from the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur), who is priestess of the Earth Goddess and-after the death of her mother Pasiphae-the last Matriarch-Queen of Crete. 466), Brindel exploits an ancient tale to probe the warring ''male'' and ''female'' impulses which shaped the character of Western religion, and to speculate about the last days of the female theocracies.

Ariadne by June Rachuy Brindel