I have many mixed feelings about Elektra. All in all it was a brilliant book, I'm just not sure it was my taste. After Ariadne, I wad so excited to read Elektra. Ariadne had an energy I can't describe to it that I have not found in any other book and I was hopeful that Elektra would carry that same energy, but it did not. That doesn't make it a bad book, it was just not what I was in the mood for.
Elektra focuses a lot more on motherhood than Ariadne, and it is much darker. As I am not a mother, there was less for me to relate to. The book is split into three perspectives and unfortunately the character I like the least gets the most page time. Elektra focuses on a much heavier topic than Ariadne so it makes sense that the vibe of the book itself is much more grim.
With all of that being said, I did greatly enjoy reading Elektra! Once I got used to the setting of the Trojan war and the very dark, revenge driven headspace of one of the narrators, I was fully swept away. Jennifer Saint is a master of writing the female perspective. She show cases so many complex themes and life struggles in a masterful way. She writes her characters emotions so that the readers can feel them as their own. That is a very rare skill. While there was a narrator I couldn't stand, I understood her emotions and her motivations. It takes skill to write a character that is hated but is loved for their complexities and their humanity.
Despite me not liking this book at first, it is a brilliant piece of work worthy of utmost respect. It was not my cup of tea at times, but the skill and dark beauty of Jennifer Saint's writing is to be commended and celebrated!
Overall, Elektra is a fantastic feminist spin on the Trojan War that showcases multiple view points and emotions from women throughout the war. I will highly recommend this book to my customers once it is published!

Song of Achilles' popularity on Tik Tok has triggered an appetite for retellings and reinterpretations of this classics, so "if you liked this, read this."

While I preferred Ariadne, Saint's first novel, Elektra is engaging, although I think it has more structural issues. It comes out of the heels of Daughters of Sparta by Claire Heywood, and Clytemnestra's narrative perspective takes center stage in both. What's interesting is how both Heywood and Saint create such vastly different Clytemnestras within the same events. Saint's Clytemnestra is very much a Spartan, a warrior avenging her child whose mental toughness surpasses all the men in the book. She gets her hands bloody, then she accepts the consequences of those actions and works throughout the rest of the book to accept and mitigate them. She makes some terrible mistakes as a mother to her living children, but in the end, she sees it and does the only things left in her power to make them better. I liked this Clytemnestra immensely, and I wonder if maybe this isn't more her book than Elektra's.

I wanted to have sympathy for Elektra. She's a daddy's girl who shows us the death of Iphigenia from his reasoned perspective, She has no real sense of loss of her sister. Iphigenia's death served a purpose. Instead, Elektra embarks on a path parallel to her mother's in her unflinching, unflagging quest for vengeance. Long before Agamemnon is actually killed, Elektra blames her mother for killing her family, slowly, component by component. But Elektra is also such an unlikable bitch and snob that when she finally is avenged, I just felt "meh." Part of that was also due to Elektra's post-revenge life feeling so rushed. After killing their father's killers, Elektra and Orestes and this other guy ran for a while then Orestes went home and Elektra hooked up with the other guy. Oh and the husband she married for reasons and ditched because she's a snobby bitch? Her brother gave him a position at court. The end. It really felt that fast.

Cassandra also serves as one of the narrators, and she is very much what we would expect of Cassandra. It's the Helen we see through her eyes that I found most interesting. Nothing touches Helen. Cassandra doesn't see any evidence of a grand passion for Paris. Helen is very openly and consciously just along for the story. Helen feels sympathy for people who suffer in the story, but she herself never does seem to really be personally much invested in what happens. She leaves one husband for another. The second dies. She goes back to the first husband and her daughter like nothing happened. Helen doesn't even suffer injuries or abuse the other women do during the sack of Troy. This is the most effective portrayal I've ever seen of Helen's supposed divine blood. Yeah, she's super pretty, but she's more like the gods in the sense that mortal issues don't have any kind of real impact on her. In contrast, the very human Cassandra's life is shattered first by Apollo then by the fate of Troy-in which the gods had a hand.

Elektra does get the last word in the book, so perhaps this is why she gets the title. She survives with all the suffering and scars.

I love retellings of mythology, and I loved this book too! Taking a character who may not be familiar to many lay readers, he imbues her and the other women who become entangled with her story with a life and vitality. A great retelling that doesn't get bogged down!

Elektra covers a lot of ground, discussing parts of the Iliad, the Odyssey, and Orestes in this narrative about the House of Atreus. The story is told from three povs: Cassandra, princess of Troy, Clytemnestra, Agamemnon's wife, and Elektra, daughter of Clytemnestra. These three character are brought together through the horrid actions of the men around them, Cassandra's brother Paris steals Helen away to Troy and begins the Trojan war. Clytemnestra's husband sacrifices their oldest daughter for a fair wind to get the Greek army to Troy to seek glory, and Elektra is loyal to her father and his memory, and burns with anger towards her mother. This is a story that many familiar with Greek mythology already know, but it's always great to see myths from the female characters' points of view. I will say, I had assumed Elektra was the main character (due to the title), but felt she was the weakest character. Clytemnestra was the strongest, her character was nuanced and engaging, and gave a lot of insight into what her character could have been thinking. Elektra in contrast was hardly a major player in the narrative until about 70% through the book, having spent ten years being angry with her mother and waiting for her father to return. I would've liked to have seen more from her, and from Cassandra, who was depicted as she almost always is.

I so loved Ariadne and Jennifer Saint's ability to create very flawed female characters, women that I felt so much empathy in one breath, and was annoyed with in the next. She just knows how to write real women. So, I jumped on the chance to get my hands on an early copy of her next book Elektra, a searing and stunning take on a few of the women who get lost in the story of the Trojan War. If you are a fan of Greek retellings and love female driven stories, this is a book to put on your wishlist!

I thoroughly enjoyed this book! It's possible I'm swayed because I have taught some of the Greek myths in a college class, but I really think this retelling was engaging and entertaining. What's especially wonderful is that it's about women, who get short shrift in a lot of the texts most read and taught. The stories are already so dramatic and great, but Saint really imbues the characters with personality to which the reader can connect. I am a fan.

In a growing market where the myths and stories of Ancient Greece are coming to the forefront, Elektra definitely pulls its weight in the ring. An addicting story following one of the underdog women in Greece. If you loved Circe and Song of Achilles you will most certainly like this one as well. A great addition to the winter reading stack!