Clair (and if you don’t like smex try Alexandra Braken or if you’re literally a child try Mary Pope Osborn).

It felt like the author was in a rush while writing them, and the reader doesn’t have much opportunity to fully embrace the characters and their stories, which should be the whole point of the book. When I first started this book, the “Athena” chapter was heavily influenced by Ovids Metamorphoses which I had just finished- so at these points my reading wasn’t super fast as the myths were already fresh in my mind. There are stories of love and desire, adventure and magic, destructive gods, helpless humans, fantastical creatures, resourceful witches and the origins of birds and animals.I don’t know where this book is supposed to fit in amongst all these other great authors turning out amazing interesting hilarious novels and books.

And there's too particular ones that use this system so well, because they make it more organic and less stiff - Circe's chapter fits itself into the scenes of Odysseus in her island, and then Arachne's has it taking place during the competition with Athena, and has the two tapestries, each with a theme to itself! She includes deft Homeric epithets (“the deathless goddess”), unobtrusive embedded quotations of resonant couplets from Sophoclean tragedy, and luscious Homeric similes at unexpected moments.That said, it is easy to read and some parts of prose are clearly very inspired by Ancient Greek poetic voice (but the writing is, at the same time, quite clunky in parts — almost like it reads in translation. Absolutely not, not even as a first-time reader of the myths, since the author manages something that I didn’t ever think it was possible: she makes Greek mythology terribly boring and unengaging. To present the women of this world through their hard work - the toil of the loom should not be dismissed as minimal, this is not modern day chilled crafting - and through the stories they tell in the weaving, the space they create whilst doing so and the viewpoints and private experiences they hint at, the voice they create through this work. Within each weaving/chapter, the stories are many of those familiar to us already, the Trojan War/ Odyssey, Persephone, Arachne and Athena (that one was particularly well written), and some are far more obscure (the rise of Dionysus and his many many side adventures).