Medea by Eilish Quin: ⭐⭐⭐⭐💫
Format: ARC from Atria Books and NetGalley

This absolutely stunning debut from Eilish Quin is one that mythology retelling lovers won’t want to miss! A novel featuring one of the most infamous characters of Greek mythology, framed in a feminist lens, and with a writing style evocative of Madeline Miller, Medea is a perfect combination of beauty and tragedy.

I haven’t read any other books in which Medea is a focal point. When reading the blurb, it's clear that history regards her as a malignant force. It's a tricky thing, to retell a story that has already been written with a very unhappy ending. Writing a Medea retelling with a goal of understanding and empathy of this character is a huge challenge, and Eilish Quin rose to the occasion and did a wonderful job. (and as a debut?!)

Two of the biggest strengths of this book that I want to highlight are the writing style and the research. Seriously, this book is beautifully written, poetic and compelling- once I started reading this, I got really sucked in and enchanted by the story. There were so many gorgeous quotes that I highlighted in my copy! In discussions with Quin, and after reading the author’s note, it’s plain to see that Quin has a vast amount of knowledge about the subject matter, and that really shines through in the plot and the language of Medea- from a understanding of the origins and complex relationships between multi-generational characters, to authentic spelling and uses of Greek places and vocabulary.

Again, this is a book that I think mythology retelling readers will absolutely love! I absolutely recommend it, but I do want to stress the importance of reviewing the content before deciding if this book is for you. Though I was compassionate to Medea, it was still very hard for me to read some of the more devastating scenes in her story.

Thank you to Atria Books and NetGalley for the ARC of Medea, which publishes this upcoming Tuesday 2/13/24, in exchange for my honest review.

I loved the prose of this story. I wasn't overly familiar with Medea's story in general but I loved reading this and learning about her. A great read for anyone with a passing interest in mythology.

Medea is one of the most reviled women in Greek mythology and certainly one of the most complex, so I was very excited to read this retelling! It is beautiful written. The prose is poetic and gorgeous. I will definitely read more from Eilish Quin.

My biggest problem with this book had to be the love arrow. I understand that it was included because it was in the original myth, but Medea shows practically no signs of having been struck. I feel like it would have been better to just omit the arrow in this retelling. My other admittedly small qualm was that there were several idioms used that do not make sense in the context of Ancient Greece, such as keeping cards close to the chest or sounding the alarm, which just took me out of the story a bit.

Overall, however, this was a very enjoyable book. The character work was excellent and I loved seeing a more nuanced and feminist take on the original myth. Eilish Quin is definitely a talented author and I look forward to reading more from her!

Medea is a retelling and debut about the evil sorcerer Medea, Here we learn about her childhood in Kolchis, her relationship with her family, magic, and her romance with Jason (for which she is best remembered). Medea is not good or evil, she is a person who is not perfect and makes mistakes, I did not consider her gray characters although some of her actions are almost unjustifiable.

Since her childhood she began to practice with her magic, it’s powerful, and she has unique and dangerous powers, at first she does not exploit her full potential, because can do dangerous and forbidden things, but when she believes that don’t have another option, she will not hesitate to use magic, justifying that it is necessary and for a better future.

Medea has a lonely air, she is close to her younger brother, and she is his protector, but despite that, her life feels lonely, different from others, and misunderstood. Her brother tries to understand her and justifies her actions as necessary but at the same time he does see her as she is, despite their mistakes, their bond is unbreakable.

Despite marrying Jason, their relationship feels more like a need or something that must happen through their history together, it is not based on love or respect, but on what should be.

Medea is so interesting because she can do horrible things, but you can still sympathize with her a little, she doesn't want to be the villain, but she can't help it, she believes she needs to use her powers to bring peace, to save her brother or Jason.

It's a slow-paced story, which makes you delve into the story, love the setting, you really feel like you are on a Greek island or sailing through the sea inside the Argo, Jason’s ship. As it is a retelling, many characters from Greek mythology are mentioned but I do not think it is necessary to know them all, most are mentioned in passing (like Easter eggs) or the author explains who they are.

Thank you to Atria for the early copy

Read it if you want:
• Greek Mythology
• Woman Redemption
• Complex Characters

MEDEA
Eilish Quin

When I read the synopsis and looked up a little bit about MEDEA’S story, I thought…convince me of this and you win.

MEDEA is a story of a mythological sorceress. She was born of Aeetes and Idyia. Her destiny, she found out early, was imminent, not hers to control, only hers to navigate and experience.

In her early years, she discovers an affinity for sorcery and magic. Her midlife was spent walking the line between life in death. In her later years, she became a mother. Pushed to the brink and without a lot of power otherwise, out of choices she felt were options, she kills her children in an act of revenge against her husband Jason.

A wild story!

Quin has an almost magical way with words. If she has magical powers, it is that of a storyteller. Reading the first chapter I felt like bombs were going off. The writing is powerful and exceptional, and it turned a mildly interesting subject into something fascinating.

I felt everything was executed perfectly except for when it came to the level of suspense.

There was a point where I felt like the story was dragging. Or perhaps where the suspense was pulled too far without enough to keep me turning pages. The promise was so big sometimes the story building, although necessary felt like a distraction. All the action was weighted towards the ending and it could’ve been balanced better.

Other than that, I was convinced and I enjoyed my reading experience. I gave MEDEA four stars and will read whatever Quin publishes next if I get the pleasure.

Thanks to Netgalley and Atria Books for the advanced copy and the opportunity to provide feedback!

MEDEA…⭐⭐⭐⭐

I really enjoyed this take on the myth of Medea! Her myth is a dark one, and I feel that it was executed well. Medea is a complex character in this book. You get to see what shapes her and what sends her on darker paths. The prose is easy to read. You don’t necessarily need knowledge of Medea and Greek myth to understand the character in this retelling, but having that knowledge makes the book and characterization better, in my opinion. Overall, a solid take on Medea’s myth. Definitely for fans of other feminist retellings of Greek myth.

I received an ARC through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Medea is surprisingly a character who I don’t know much about other than her involvement in Jason’s quest so I knew I had to read this retelling. This was excellent! I have seen a lot of comparisons to Madeline Miller’s Circe and I can see the similarities in both the writing and pacing. The only thing keeping this from a five star reads was the fact that the beginning was a bit slow so it took me a while to get into. I highly recommend this one!

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Pub Date: February 13, 2024

If you enjoy Greek retellings I highly recommend this one! Beautiful and emotional writing giving a new perspective and voice to a maligned character. Wonderful debut!

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria for an eARC! This review is my own honest opinion.

"If he wanted to call me his wife, he could, so long as he knew that I was no more his than the sea owns the sky."

FIVE STARS 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

As a a fan of the classics and someone who is *very* picky about retellings, Medea by Eilish Quin is among my very favorites. Blurring the lines between mythology and history, fantasy and reality, Quin creates a timeless tale, holding an ancient idea up to the light so we may see it from a new perspective.
From the first paragraph, Medea is a strange and ancient creature, weaving for you the story of her mother’s birth beneath the sea. There is no illusion that this story will be a modern romp, or that it will end in any way but tragedy.
Medea is a woman living in a world that has no place for her, and Quin does not pretend that the ancient world was anything other than it was. Myth and history blend together until you are parting the curtain of the past, watching a little girl grow into a woman with the weight of disaster on her shoulders.
Quin’s Kolchis is home to strange beasts and goddesses that emerge from between the trees, but the fantastical is grounded firmly in the familiar - this is Medea’s home, the only one she has ever known. The mystical allure of her sorcery is tempered by the painfully realistic portrayal of her father’s hatred and misogyny, which lends both a dreamlike quality.
In Kolchis, the world is sharp and cruel, but so is our heroine.
We all know the way this story will end before we even turn the first page.
This, I think, was the most compelling aspect of Medea: even when she is a child, young and wishing for her mother’s love, we know where she is headed, because we've seen her go that way before.
She will kill her brother. She will kill her children. The journey Quin takes us on, then, is the how and the why.
Throughout her story, we are immersed in Medea’s interiority. She is not a monster or a villain or a tragedy in the making; she is a little girl, and then she is a woman, and then she is a mother, and the things she has seen, the things that have been done to her, have pushed her too far.
From the shores of Kolchis, to the island of Aeaea, to the far off palace of Iolcus, Quin weaves a narrative where you cannot help but empathize with Medea, which makes her inevitable fall that much more painful. Seeing her grow from a girl lends us an intimate understanding of her heart - we know the things she loves just as well as the things she fears.
Through Medea’s eyes we are introduced to her family - some of whom I desperately wished to know better, some of whom I wanted to protect from the machinations of fate, and some of whom I simply wanted to hit with a really big hammer. (Aeetes, I’m looking at you.)
Just as Medea herself is the niece of Circe, I feel as if Quin’s work is a distant relative of Miller’s: both have an archaic, lyrical quality that draws you in and keeps you under their spell. Quin’s prose is lush and vivid, managing to be both familiar and foreign, as if it were a translation of a much older text.
As a history enthusiast who focuses on the fashion and daily life of ancient Greece, my only issues with Medea were a handful of odd anachronisms: crystalware and sparkling wine, neither of which existed in ancient Greece as we know them today, and one mention of a corset that threw me for a loop.
In the grand scheme of things, these were very, very minor issues that I am particularly pretentious about, and may be removed in the final version, as I read an ARC.
Overall, Medea was an enchanting, heartbreaking book that swept me away to a world in which heroes and monsters walked the earth, but never looked as you might imagine. Anyone who fell in love with Circe and Madeline Miller’s portrayal of the ancient world, I believe, will also fall in love with Medea.
I can’t wait for more people to meet her.

Nine and a Half Bookwyrms out of Ten!

I was beyond impressed with the writing from this debut novel. It was descriptive and poetic. Every chapter painted a picture of Medea’s life and struggles. I could really tell Eilish Quinn took a lot of time to research the complexities of Medea and combined them to create an interesting main character.

Women reclaiming their mythological stories and being seen in a new light is a new trend and I'm all the way here for it. Last year it was Medusa, and now it is Medea that had me completely captivated. I loved this book and think everone should try it out.

I received an ARC via Netgalley against an honest review. Thanks to the publisher.

3.5 rounded up to 4. The prose is clear and fluid, the plot and re-imagining of Medea's story spot on, but I had a hard time with the pace, in particular the first third of the book. I understand it was intended to show us Medea's upbringing, struggles, how she became a witch, how the men in her life shaped her fate, but it could have been shorter, or narrated in a more compelling way.

Around 40% of the book, the story picks up and that's when I really got into it. So if you can push through the beginning of the book, a captivating story awaits, should you be familiar with Medea's myth or not. I found the ending a bit underwhelming and it left me wanting more. Perhaps I expected something more striking after such a great build up? It was still a very good journey with memorable characters.

To sum it up, though this was not an unforgettable read, it was a very pleasant one, and I am certain that it will delight fans of Greek mythology. For a debut, it is promising. I look forward to the author's next book.

I can’t believe this is Quin’s debut novel! It is truly fantastic in every sense of the word and I loved reading it so much. Quin is a superbly talented author!

Medea is such a well written book and a great addition to the world of Greek mythology fiction. I am so excited to see what Quin comes up with next.

The style of the book is reminiscent of Circe by Madeleine Miller or Ariadne by Jennifer Saint in that Medea is telling us the story of her life from her perspective, thus making it read more like a novel than a historical narrative like the Claire North books that look back on events with a more analytical voice and use narrators to intersperse and comment on stories. Despite the similarities in storytelling however, the story feels fresh and unique, and I throughly enjoyed being immersed in her world. The gorgeous writing weaves a clear picture of the kingdom of Kolchis, her villainous father Aeetes, her ocean drawn mother, and the enticing world of Pharmakon.

Quin does an excellent job capturing the familial relationships and providing depth and dimension to young Medea. I loved this insight into Medea as, she is typically cast as a villain and, although some of her actions are certainly worthy of that title, in this book we can’t help but feel pity and sorrow for the hand Medea was dealt in life and the influences that forces her to act the way she did. She goes from being a typical Grecian witch to a much more complex figure in the story of Jason.

I loved seeing a more complete picture of Jason too. It’s so easy to get caught up in the heroic deeds completed in ancient myths, but when considered from all angles, the hero is often no less villainous than the villain. History is of course written by the victor. Or in the case of Ancient Greece, men.

This is a book I will read again and recommend for lovers of greek mythology. To be released on Feb 13th, 2024.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria Book for an eARC copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I really wanted to like this book, but the pacing was incredibly slow and it felt like a chore to get anywhere. The prose is beautiful and reminiscent of Madeline Miller’s writing, but at some points, it almost hinders the book with its meandering when the original Greek material is fast-paced and incredibly engaging. It was difficult to get a sense of Medea’s character with this narration, and she felt like another Circe—whereas the Medea of texts like Euripides was incredibly powerful and dramatic, this one seemed subdued (though again, it may be the long descriptions and narration influencing me).

There is, admittedly, an overabundance of Greek mythology retellings at the moment. And most of them do very similar things: feminist retellings of mythological women who might or might not have been vilified, portraying them as misunderstood or their actions as justified by reframing the intent behind them while at the same time often depicting the heroes that marry or vanquish them in a less than stellar light. Do these retellings still wow me? No, most of the times they don't. Do I still enjoy them and will I continue reading anything remotely similar? Yes, you bet.

Eilish Quin's "Medea" is not an exception. It's a pretty standard modern retelling, giving Medea her own voice and Jason his villain arc. I quite enjoyed the book, the writing is beautiful, the pacing is fine and Medea is a complex character I liked. I thought the reasons for her turning to the darker sides of sorcery were well-explained, and I enjoyed her family dynamics.
There were some things I wasn't a fan of, though. For one, the way certain themes were presented was at times very on the nose. Medea's father basically couldn't walk two steps without spewing his opinions about the inferiority of the female gender, and Medea's first crush spoke about his disdain for women in such a heavy-handed way, unprompted and unnecessary, that it just screamed "yes, hate these men, they are evil misogynists". I usually prefer a more subtle, organic approach. I also didn't feel like the attempted rape scene had to be included at all in order to make us, as readers, understand why Medea is wary of men and turns out the way she does. Her familial relationships would have more than sufficed.
I also felt like Jason wasn't very intriguingly written. While I enjoy these new retellings showing us that the big heroes are actually not that heroic after all, even borderline villainous at times, Jason's portrayal lacks a little nuance. He's hot and charming, yes, but really he's just an all around bad guy and kind of a loser. He's not an intriguing bad guy either. Medea's writing is at times a little inconsistent, too - she constantly regrets her actions and is haunted by them, yet keeps making the same decisions. The death of king Pelias felt really weird in this retelling, to name one example.

All in all, this was an enjoyable, okay retelling. It's a quick, well-written read about a great and complex character with some flaws but I'm sure most Greek retelling fans will like it.

A beautifully woven greek retelling


Media is another great book rec for the fans of Madeline miller. Through rich characterization Quin represents an often scorned woman seen as a brutal murderess, crafting a version of a girl lost in need of love and refugee. The complexity of her emotions, the different aspects of her character, the contradiction of who she is versus who shes forced to act as are all so enriched with Quins beautiful and vivid writing. Such an incredible tale and one of 2024s most incredible books I am certain.

I did enjoy this book and feel it would be a good introductory book to someone new to Greek mythology retellings.

I loved how Medea was portrayed in this retelling and all the aspects of "witchery" and herbalism.

I will say that I had a hard time connecting with most of the characters - which is also not surprising since it's Greek mythology.

If you are new to Greek mythology and want to test the waters, this is definitely a great book to start out with!

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for the ARC. I think this is a good intro to retellings as it's very easy to follow. Apart from the thankfully short gruesome bits, this was very pleasant. I was expecting more character depth, but the events spanned a number of years which is hard to do without being summary.

While I enjoyed the read, all the side characters and especially the men all felt flat. I didn't feel connected to any of the side characters, and didn't feel any tension until right at the end. Normally that would break a book for me, but this was still an enjoyable read.

2.5 stars rounded up. It's hard to tell how much of the positives are attributable to the author, or merely to the story of Medea itself.

This book is told from the perspective of Medea (shocking, I know). You'd think that would mean we would truly see deep inside her head, into her darkest feelings. That was not the case here. There was just so little FEELING I was getting from her. Why was Medea making these choices? These momentous actions that Medea herself would make felt like they had been thrust upon her, and that she had little to no agency. These decisions were hugely impactful on the story but they just felt passive. There was emotion for the reader purely because of the drama these acts required, but the author did little to nothing to add to this.

The writing was very beautiful, and I felt it was an easy, enchanting read. There was one point, however, where an obvious parallel came up - a beautiful ram at the end, much like the ram of the golden fleece. At first I thought, "oh what a beautiful parallel" before Quin immediately wrote, "It much reminded Medea of the golden ram from before." This took me out of it, as if the writer was trying too hard to impress the reader.

Overall not a bad book, I just think the market for Greek retellings is pretty saturated, and it takes a lot to stand out at this point.

Thank you to Atria Books and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

ARC copy provided by NetGalley.

What to say about Medea.

I am allergic to Greek myth retellings. They give me hives. Something about them feels wrong. There is almost always a thrust-on politic that is donned with the idea that the source material's politic must be modernized. Look at these barbarous ancient Greeks! How like them we can sound.

Medea suffers from this, and suffers heavily. Eilish Quin's writing is bracing, riveting one to the page, and she clearly loves Medea, as the reader may come to as well. The problem is that she cannot seem to love Medea the monster the way she loves Medea the avenging angel.

This preoccupation with the idea there must be a single, identifiable root cause for someone's otherwise unthinkable behavior seemed lacking to me (to the point of arguably making up a pedophile that is not contained in any source text...). Greek myths are often about embracing the monstrous, loving it even as it kills you. It is also just not realistic. People who fracture and shatter like this - of which there are many, every day - do so because of a million small horrors, moreso than they do because of one event, long ago. A catalyst, sure, but not the sole cause, or they would likely have snapped then and there. Medea does not need a made-up pedophile to hate men; Aeetes is right there if the reader longs for a "reason."

This version of Medea...it felt like she lacked teeth. Especially while reading Euripides' Medea alongside, Quin's Medea felt like she had everything to prove, up until the very last word. Euripides' Medea is shrewd, cautious, alive, and yes, monstrous. It is this mix of traits that draws the reader into her; she assures us we are in good hands. Quin landed on shrewd and cautious and then seemingly stopped short of making her human - which is to say, monstrous.

More of a petty gripe, but she was constantly comparing herself to other women in the novel - and while I understand that insecurities exist, the barrage of "they were so pale and beautiful" felt gratuitous, tonally inconsistent, irrelevant to what Medea herself actually cared about, and it was unsuccessful hand-waved away by a short, single sentence implying Medea experienced attraction to women. It felt lazy. Why bring something like that up with no intention of exploring it? (The answer being that it was narratively billed as part of Medea's monstrosity, which - not to belabor the whole point of this review - Eilish does not seem interesting in addressing in any real way.)

Overall, a fine book, but definitely reaffirmed my suspicions that these popular myth retellings are not for me, and no amount of beautiful writing (of which there was a significant amount!) can make them so.