"When vengeance calls and the gods stop watching, what happens to those who have touched the people I love?"

Thank you Michael J Books, netgalley and Costanza Casati for the ARC of Clytemnestra.

I really enjoyed Casati's take on Clytemnestra. I have read Jennifer Saint's Elektra and Claire Heywood's Daughters of Sparta in the past 12 months, and whilst I enjoyed Saints and Heywood's interpretations, I found them too similar.

Casati's Clytemnestra really stood out from the crowd for me.

I found Casati's Clytemnestra freer and so much more powerful, particularly considering her warrior training during her upbringing in Sparta, which was a new element to Clytemnestra's persona.

I also hadn't known that there are versions of Clytemnestra's mythology which see her married and bear a child with first husband Tantalus, which again added a surprising new side to Clytemnestra and her pain.

Clytemnestra's hatred for Agamemnon is visceral, as expected. However she is so much more open about this, even with him directly at multiple stages in the story.

The dynamic between Clytemnestra and Electra was awkward and wanting. Which brings much more nuance to their relationship, which we often simply see as daughter hating mother.

I also found that Clytemnestra's familial relationships with her siblings Helen, Castor, Polydeuces and Timandra were much more interconnected, which gave the story so much more texture. Normally the family are portrayed as estranged after Clytemnestra and Helen are married to the Atreidi. But here Clytemnestra makes at least 3 journeys back to Sparta or elsewhere to be with her family.

Overall, I really enjoyed Casati's Clytemnestra, and if you are into Greek mythology I think you will too.

Two sisters, princesses of Sparta, as close as sisters can be yet each feeling dwarfed by the shadow the other casts. Helen is the most beautiful woman that Greece has ever seen, so beautiful that some believe her father to be a god. Clytemnestra is the strongest and most cunning of women, a true Spartan and their father’s favourite. These differences will take them down very different paths, but there are two things they will always have in common. Love and pain: the two things that no woman can avoid.

This retelling of this popular myth gives a far greater depth to the character of Clytemnestra than any I have read before. It reveals parts of her story that I was not aware of and gave her a backstory to explain the powerful emotions that drove her terrible actions. Love and loss are powerful motivators and I liked the way that these emotions feed into both her strengths and weaknesses.

There is also a rich cultural backdrop in this book which shows a dedicated level of research from the author. It paints the stark differences between Sparta and the rest of ancient Greece and beyond. This is particularly apparent in their women whose strength and freedom is unrecognised elsewhere. In this context Clytemnestra is a remarkable woman who fights hard to earn and hold onto her power in a society that is constantly working against her. If she makes mistakes along the way then this is to be expected in a world that was not built for people like her.

A decent addition to the Iliad-retelling genre. It's a little clumsy in parts - I'd hide the intensive research just a little more, keep it suffusing the narrative rather than showcased in it - and lacks the absolute brio of Natalie Haynes' A Thousand Ships or Claire North's recent Ithaca; but I very much liked the additional and background narrative - and particularly the depiction of Helen, who's almost always portrayed in seductress mode. And let's face it, Clytemnestra needs a rewrite.

The story of Clytemnestra has always fascinated me. Costanza Casati’s debut is the first book I’ve read where we see the events directly from Clytemnestra’s perspective and the effect is haunting. We follow Clytemnestra’s early life in Sparta through to her first marriage and then second more infamous partnership. What I loved about this book was the attention Casati gives to Clytemnestra’s family, most notably Helen, but also her mother Leda, her sister Timandra, her brothers and her father. I loved the relationship between Clytemnestra and Helen, the latter of whom I’ve always felt too mythical to be realistically portrayed. Here, Helen is very much flesh and I really felt the love between the two sisters and the tension that arises from their desire to be seen and valued for who are they as opposed to what they represent. This desire is at odds with the patriarchal society they live in and some of the more difficult scenes in this book are driven by the men who are threatened by their power. There’s something about this story that lingers long after I’ve finished reading it. This isn’t just due to the beautiful writing, but probably from how contemporary the themes in this book are (beauty as both a blessing and a curse, along with how controversial it is even in this day to be both powerful and a woman). Overall, Clytemnestra was a stunning read and I’m very much looking forward to Casati’s next book.