As a lover of Greek Myth retellings I was really interested in reading The Hymn to Dionysus by Natasha Pulley. Thank you to Orion Publishing Group and Netgalley for providing me with a complimentary copy for review purposes.

Natasha Pulley is a new author to me so I wasn't sure what to expect. But as this book is marketed at fans of Song of Achilles and Elecktra I guess I was expecting an interesting myth retelling. What I wasn't expecting was a mix of Greek Myth, romance and magical realism. I was particularly surprised by addition of technology in the form of the mechanical marvels. Once I got past the fact that this wasn't going to be a strict retelling and let go of my knowledge of the myths I began to enjoy it. I appreciated the writing style and the humour in the dialogue. It made the story fun and fresh, even if a little sweary. I feel that the author captured the true essence of Dionysus and brought it to life on the page.

This is historical fantasy Greek mythology retelling.

Our point of view male main character is a warrior in a city on the brink of devastation who is essentially just waiting for the god he slighted to come and take his revenge. When the prince goes missing and madness starts to sweep across the city, he works with this newly arrived witch to try and solve things.

Except he's pretty sure that the witch is the god and is just tormenting him before finally ending his life, and yet he can't help.what he feels for him.

It's quite hard to summarise the plot for this as it starts with the main character at only 4 years old and goes right through to adulthood. And there is a lot going on!

As with all Natasha Pulley books, this is a queer relationship which is very messy and on very different sides, in this instance of mortality.

Our MMC is extremely traumatised by war, and by being the reason that his mentor/husband died. And everything around him is falling apart, he's in charge of a group of children who will become warriors but has to take them out hunting for people trying to escape the city. Essentially there's a lot of the darker content you would expect from Greek mythology, and yet I still ended it feeling quite good about things.

I think that the way language is used is interesting, particularly in the dialogue, because it's very current, and quite British feeling. But there's a moment where a character asks for a different translation of a word - and it's not the word we reads as the reader. So I'm taking that as an indication that we are getting the translation that makes sense to us rather than it being a recreation of how those characters would have spoken at that point in history.

4.5 stars, rounded up

I know what you’re thinking: not another Greek mythology book! There have been so many in recent years, it would be easy to dismiss this one as just more of the same. However, I found it completely different from any of the others I’ve read, and despite the marketing it’s nothing like the Greek retellings written by Madeline Miller or Jennifer Saint.

The Hymn to Dionysus is narrated by Phaidros, whom we first meet as a child being trained as a knight in a Greek legion (knight is the term Pulley uses, but it clearly just refers to a mounted soldier rather than our image of a medieval knight). Phaidros doesn’t know who his parents are, but that’s not considered important in the Theban army, where your duty and loyalty is to your commander – in this case, Helios, who provides all the love, guidance and leadership Phaidros needs. He never questions his commander’s orders until the day when, during a trip to Thebes, Phaidros rescues a blue-eyed baby from a fire at the palace and Helios insists on the baby being abandoned at a temple, never to be mentioned again.

Many years later, Phaidros is a commander himself, training new recruits in Thebes. When Pentheus, the crown prince, disappears, desperate to escape an arranged marriage, Phaidros is drawn into the search, something which leads him to an encounter with a blue-eyed witch, Dionysus. The arrival of Dionysus coincides with an outbreak of madness amongst the knights of Thebes and stories of a mysterious new god. Is there a connection between Dionysus and the baby boy rescued by Phaidros all those years ago?

I read Natasha Pulley’s The Bedlam Stacks, set in 19th century England and Peru, when it was published in 2017 and although it was getting glowing reviews from everyone else at the time, I didn’t like it very much, mainly because I found the language irritatingly modern and anachronistic and the magical realism elements were stronger than I expected. I haven’t tried any of her other novels since then, but I loved one of her short stories which appeared in The Winter Spirits, a ghost story anthology, so I thought it would be worth giving her another chance. I’m glad I did, because I found this book a lot more enjoyable. It’s still written in very modern language, but that doesn’t seem to bother me quite as much when a book is set in the ancient world, although I would find it difficult to explain why.

Although I’ve read other Greek mythology novels in which Dionysus and some of the other characters appear, I don’t really have a very extensive knowledge of the myths surrounding them (I haven’t read Euripides’ play, The Bacchae, in which some of this is covered) and I think this was probably actually a good thing, as it meant I could just enjoy the story without having too many preconceived expectations. As I’ve said, it’s not a typical retelling anyway; as far as I can tell, it draws on various aspects of different myths and blends them together to form an original story. There are elements of magic – ivy that suddenly begins to grow when Dionysus is around; masks that bestow new characteristics on the wearers – but the book never quite becomes full-blown fantasy. I loved Pulley’s descriptions of the giant mechanical statues she calls ‘marvels’ and although I doubt they would have existed in the way she describes, there are examples of automata dating back to Ancient Greece so it could have been possible.

The main focus of the book, though, is on Phaidros and his relationships – particularly the one with Dionysus, which develops slowly as Phaidros wonders whether Dionysus is the baby he rescued all those years ago or whether he isn’t, whether he’s the ‘mad god’ everyone is talking about or whether he is just the witch he claims to be. I liked Phaidros and enjoyed the way he narrated his story, so even though this is a long book I felt that the pages went by quite quickly. I'll probably read more books by Natasha Pulley now.

Dionysus the god of chaos, creativity, madness (a mystical madness) is one of the most intriguing of the Olympics, the opposite of Apollo. in my mind there's a lot of confusion between mythology and Nietezsche.
I loved this book as it tells a different story but it doesn't turn the characters into a XXI century people who is supposed to speak Greek.
Well done, intiguing.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

Despite retellings of Greek mythology being everywhere at the moment, I would read anything in any genre if Natasha Pulley wrote it. As usual, she doesn't disappoint. 'The Hymn to Dionysus' is her own take - it shies away following from the more famous and common stories, and although it includes some characters from mythology, the story is her own. Despite the very wide range of settings she has written in, Pulley does have a 'formula' - a common core that features in every one of her novels so far. All her novels are centred on a love story with a power imbalance, between a hapless everyman character (usually the main viewpoint character), and a mysterious, complex, seemingly very kind but possibly villainous love interest. The thing is, she can make it work and be interesting because every one of her novels has so much more to it around that central theme. I usually steer clear of romance and often get irritated by romance subplots, being a cynical person, but this is one of the few writers who can do romance and make me really feel it, enjoy it and care about the characters and their relationship.

The book is set in ancient Greece, mostly in the city of Thebes, and is narrated throughout by a solider, Phaidros, beginning in his childhood when he rescues a baby from a burning building. In another incident years later, he tries to help, then betrays, a boy taken as a slave on the ship he is travelling in, only for the boy to display supernatural powers. The main story then picks up with an older Phaidros living unhappily in the city, training recruits. There has been a prolonged drought and the city is at risk of famine, when a strange madness starts affecting some of the soldiers. It might be linked to Dionysus, a witch who befriends Phaidros, who might also be the baby and/or the boy, returned for revenge. As the city teeters on the brink of revolution, Phaidros becomes a pawn in the queen's efforts to prevent disaster.

Phaidros is a very likeable character and the reader is quickly invested in his fate. The story of his relationship with Dionysus is as captivating and maddening as all of Pulley's romances, but besides this there are other interesting characters - Agave the queen, her son Pentheus, and Phaidros's former commander, Helios. The central theme of the story is duty and the need for a balance in life. The Thebans value duty and honour above all else, and believe in the suppression of emotion and free will, to the extent that the highest aspiration is to be like a statue. As a result the city runs well and the armies are successful, but compassion and humanity are in short supply. The madness brought by Dionysus is the other extreme, but can also be seen as an antidote to the emotional coldness of the Thebans.

It's full of incident and exciting and absorbing to read throughout. Because it doesn't follow any specific myth, and none of it closely, you don't know what's going to happen even if you have a good knowledge of the mythology. There are some thought provoking aspects as well, and I particularly liked how Phaidros used the analogy of finding other cultures had a colour (blue) which his people did not recognise as separate, to understand how concepts may be 'obvious' to one people but completely alien to another.

If you enjoy well written stories, and don't mind a bit of fantasy, then you should read all of Pulley's books. Fans of Greek myth re-telling should definitely have it at the top of their reading list for this year!

Greek gods & myths taken & a story loosely woven around them. I love the Natasha Pulley books I've read so far & am fascinated by Greek mythology but I'm afraid I found this a little too confusing in parts. I may reread at some stage as I had to read quickly before the publish date so probably didn't give it the attention that it needs!

Greek myth, Natasha Pulley style.

Phaidros is a Sown knight, raised to be a warrior since he was a toddler. When he's very young, he rescues a blue-eyed baby left out for Zeus (the baby's mother claiming he's a son of Zeus). Years later, Phaidros (suffering probable PTSD) is back in Thebes as a teacher of young knights. The whole region is suffering through a terrible drought and no amount of offerings or sacrifices to the gods is doing any good. As tensions rise in the city, things come to a head: a prince going missing; people start going mad and singing blasphemous hymns to an unknown god; and a blue-eyed witch called Dionysus appears.

If you think I've just explained the plot, this is nothing. There's so much going on in this book.

I'm not sure what people will think of it who are coming in expecting a standard Greek myth retelling. This is very much a Natasha Pulley story that happens to be set in Ancient Greece and use parts of Greek myth. She embellishes the world, adding mechanical marvels and clocks, making it a world in which gods and magic exist but also technology means that sometimes things aren't as mystical as they seem (and sometimes they are).

Dionysus comes along just when Phaidros most needs him, he's become too much like the mechanical marvels - ticking away and doing his duty at the expense of his own sense of self. Dionysus brings kindness and a little magic and madness and wonder. I actually wish we had a bit more time with him, as he tends to spend a lot of the story dancing in and out of the shadows as Phaidros is pushed and pulled in all directions.

Is it maybe a little long? Yes, but I actually enjoyed this the more I read so I won't complain about that too much. Was it confusing it places? Again yes, but it's one of those books that you just have to go along for the ride and it all comes together at the end.

I'll always enjoy reading Natasha Pulley, she has a breezy, humorous and slightly twisty way of writing that I just like so much.

I received a copy of the book for a free and unbiased opinion.
The writing in this book is almost poetic and I loved the world building. This is ancient Greece unlike any other- this a world of Spartans and mechanical men, women playing a part in all aspects of life including the military and a world where people believed Gods mingle with men.
It took me a while to understand what was happening and the modern language used took some getting used but didn’t stop me enjoying the story. As expected this story has betrayal, romance, war and political shenanigans alongside magic, weirdness, and of course Gods.
Phaidros is the main point of view character, and we unravel the mystery of the blue eyed boy who can make people mad alongside him. The story doesn’t shy away from the horrors of war and the effect this can have the people who have to fight them.
This is a book that needs your full attention and lots of time but it is definitely worth it!

‘Troy was a holy city and we burned it, and he is the curse that follows.’

NATASHA PULLEY DOES CLASSICAL GREEK EPIC!
NATASHA PULLEY DOES CLASSICAL GREEK EPIC!!!
I can’t tell you how excited I am – I’m a die-hard Pulley devotee, as well as a classicist, so as soon as American GR reviewers started marking this as ‘currently reading’, I was slavering for it to be open to requests on NetGalley UK, and found myself fanatically checking the website every few days until it appeared. What I needed, and what I got, was another novel of deep-dive character study situated in a characteristically bonkers setting, with that brand of lyrical intimacy that only Pulley can craft: ‘whenever my heartbeat was loud, it sounded like where are you, where are you, where are you.’

I think that Pulley fans going in will be forewarned that her pace is going to be slow. Yet, this latest book really is its own maze; readers will be as lost in it as absolutely as the androtaur is lost in Phaidros’ hive-like labyrinth in the novel; as dizzy and dazed as the god-struck dancing citizens of Thebes (in a manner not dissimilar to the choreomaniacs in Kiran Millwood Hargrave’s ‘The Dance Tree’): ‘They started to sing that song, and they started to dance, and they couldn’t stop’. We’re also aware that even Pulley’s keenest readers don’t have a hope of understanding all of what she’s unrolling whilst she’s unrolling it:

‘Our bards always ask the Muse to find the beginning, but the big joke – I say joke in the loosest possible sense – is that they never then start at the bloody beginning. Find the beginning, Muse, and then they say, well, here we are, seven years into the middle of a big adventure I haven’t told you about, there was this witch, right, and this man – and then they sparkle at you like it’s clever.’

I do have to acknowledge that there are big questions that need to be raised in a review of Pulley’s work, though, because they’ve been problematical in her previous novels. As a woman who loves women, the ongoing problematic representation of women in Pulley’s novels and her exclusive use of GBT male couples as central characters – as she continues demonising and ostracising female characters – are concerns that are important to me. Regrettably, the first question that I ask of a Natasha Pulley novel is where/how does she situate and include genders other than cis masculine this time; and how does she figure love and romance other than mlm again?

In terms of sexual orientation, unsurprisingly, in ‘The Hymn to Dionysus’, Pulley’s main character is male and the central love entanglement is between two men. This time around, the setting that legitimises their relationship is Ancient Thebes. And – of course – as a member of the LGBTQIA community, I am happy to see an author normalising queer relationships, but honestly, I have to express my disappointment again that her main characters and her romances continue in this unvarying, restrictive mlm presentation.

In terms of gender, here, Pulley makes the bold move of separating Dionysus from his Classical Greek female followers, the Bacchæ, and makes them male. Scandalous! So, if you’re one of those readers and reviewers begging for her to redeem herself after her previous two novels and these are some of the reasons why, I’m sorry to say that you may pin your hopes on that rumoured unpublished Natasha Pulley novel coming to light that we were all whispering about before ‘The Half Life of Valery K’ was released.

At this point with ‘The Hymn to Dionysus’, though, I’m not sure whether I can deduct a review star for these issues, since I haven’t deducted one for any of her other works that demonstrate them, and since – what can I say? – no-one is writing any fiction that comes close to Pulley (except perhaps Julia Armfield); she is totally and utterly unique. And I suspect that there is enough outstanding merit here to counterbalance this predictability of characterisation.

So! To Classical Greek epic! With her statement of intent, ‘I’ll tell you about rage, and a complicated man’, the author stakes a radical claim upon Classical Greek epic by amalgamating the opening lines of Homer’s ‘Iliad’ (‘Rage – Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles’) and Homer’s ‘Odyssey’ (‘Tell me about a complicated man’), ambitiously summoning both:

‘I am going to start at the beginning, because […] I was taught to report things properly, in a straight line, without faffing around and looking smug that I’ve remembered the bits I artfully left out to Reveal Unto You later on for narrative effect. I’m not going to sing it to you in poetry, either. Poetry is for things that are made up. I’m just going to tell it.
But I do promise this. One way or another, I will do what the bards always ask the Muse for, after they’ve done their stupid opening about beginnings. I’ll tell you about rage, and a complicated man.’

Repeatedly, Pulley comes out with a description or a piece of dialogue that I see, as a classicist, has been tuned to precisely the right pitch, regardless of whether its full musical phrase ever gets played. Similarly, my little classicist heart soared kite-like when she introduced Tiresias, and she uses him in the narrative deftly, with fluency borne of familiarity with his Classical figure and with swaggering faithfulness to Sophocles, Euripides, and Homer. She’ll come off with a characterisation of Dionysus that has perfect correlation to Greek literature and myth and just throw it in there, without it coming off as somehow stepping outside her own style:

‘I was still caught up on the novelty of meeting an adult who liked to play and joke and who didn’t seem to worry at all about his dignity - and the strangest thing was that he wasn’t missing dignity. He had plenty, but it was like quick silver instead of armour. You couldn’t put a dent in it.’

Yet, at times, ‘The Hymn to Dionysus’ seems to be at the farthest remove from Greek myth and Classical literature. For instance, reviewers are finding the British vernacular jarring. Pulley veers away from Classics by fabricating her own magic system and inventing functions of religious faith (ginormous bronze automatons that might or might not be inspirited by gods). Resultantly, this uncanny admixture of cavalier Englishness and what’s evidently a quite mighty comprehension of Classics, means that it becomes hopeless trying to predict her plot.

We know that Pulley excels in inverting character and narrative expectations (her ancient Amazonian priest; her samurai who remembers the future; her future genderless Martians). I wondered to myself, why has Pulley chosen to write a Greek epic? Because it’s clear that she has! Classical Greek epic is rigidly formulaic – structure, style, and content markedly known; studied, analysable; critiqued, and therefore, perhaps due to the weight of formulaic expectations it carries, perhaps it proved too tempting to upend, overturn, invert? So, then, in what fun ways does she invert Classical Greek epic in order to make this a Natasha Pulley novel? (This is where I’m going to go full geek!)

Firstly, Pulley has purloined her novel’s title from the Homeric Hymns, anonymous archaic Greek poems (perhaps composed by Homer as preludes to epic poetry - yet another signifier that we should expect to be reading a Greek epic here). In the Homeric ‘Hymn to Dionysus’, the poet writes: ‘Be favourable, […] Inspirer of frenzied women! we singers sing of you as we begin and as we end a strain, and none forgetting you may call holy song to mind’, and this could not be a more exact précis of what Pulley’s put in her latest novel (remember her words, ‘They started to sing that song, and they started to dance, and they couldn’t stop’?)! However, Pulley inverts this by making it so that it’s not women in whom Dionysus inspires frenzy, as I said – it’s men.

Pulley’s second turnabout deals with Phaidros’ sense of duty. In ‘The Hymn to Dionysus’, Pulley deals with a main precept of the Homeric epic, which is honour/glory in death in battle (think ‘it is sweet and honourable to die for one’s country’) – kleos and timê. This is the central preoccupation of Homer’s ‘Iliad’, and is figured in the character of Achilles, which nicely aligns with the fact that Pulley calls upon this Greek source in her introduction (‘I’ll tell you about rage’). But Phaidros’ hard-headed slavishness to his duties as a knight – he harps on and on and on and on about his duty – actually turns kleos/timê upside down. Phaidros is not obsessed with glory in battle, as Achilles is; his knightly duty most likens him to Aeneas, the hero of Virgil’s Latin epic, ‘The Aeneid’.

The ‘duty’ with which Pulley makes Phaidros’ obsessed is Roman and not Greek; Phaidros is presented to us as anachronistic progeny of the Roman concept of pietas rather than kleos/timê. Aeneas’ pietas is duty – yes – but not duty as in Achilles’ honour in battle. Pietas is duty to family and the home. It’s self-sacrificing glorification of the gods. Pulley’s opening phrase, similarly, permits me to draw the parallel with Virgil’s invocation to the Muse in that epic: Arma virumque cano (‘I sing of arms and the man’). And – I don’t know whether it’s just me that sees this, but – Pulley vividly recreates the scene in Virgil’s epic where Trojan Aeneas flees the fall of Troy as it’s sacked and burned. Yet Pulley flips it and gives us the victorious Greek’s (Phaidros’) viewpoint:

‘When a city burns, the smoke has an orange glow from below, from the fires, but that far above all the chaos, it’s beautiful. I loved that moment of a siege: standing on the city wall and watching the embers flit and zither into that ashy light, which was really all the palaces and monuments transformed.
He sounded like that ash-glow looked; like the funeral pyre of kingdoms.’

If this isn’t inverting our expectations of our main character, I don’t know what is; viewed this way, Pulley spins 800 years of genre expectations.

Thirdly, Pulley’s whole novel is based upon identity and confusion of identity. This is one of the principal themes of Homer’s ‘Odyssey’, with Odysseus returning home to Ithaca (21 years after he departed for the Trojan war) in disguise, thanks to a little help from his patron goddess, Athena. The character of Phaidros is definitely our pseudo-Odysseus: veteran of the Trojan war and survivor of a shipwreck. The thing is, Odysseus always held all the cards in terms of identity confusion. And the Odyssey’s moment of crisis, crux, catharsis (forgive me the anachronistic use of the term) is the climactic reveal that the downtrodden beggarman is – in fact – the husband, father, Trojan hero presumed dead, returned and ready to stage a surprise slaughter upon all those who’ve been besmirching his name, his ‘honour’ in Ithaca.

We read Pulley’s novel through Phaidros’ perspective, with certain assumptions about identity, but the jarring jump in time from the point-of-view of a toddler in the book’s prologue means that we are unsure of the correlation between the two personae. The identity of the baby Phaidros and Helios rescue is also expertly clouded – there was a nifty shell game played by Helios in the backstory. We further wonder who the bull-man androtaur is, or has been. And key to the whole substance of the novel is that the cure for mania is to wear a mask. As for the cast, neither do they themselves know who the other characters are – Phaidros doesn’t know who the captive boy on his boat was, or who the baby in Thebes was (another cloud falling upon the identity of the baby’s father), or the human identity of the bull in Phaidros’ labyrinth pre-transformation, or – indeed – who the witch is! And Dionysus? We only THINK we know who he is – we’re pleasantly confused for most of the book.

How does Pulley turn double-crosser on us here? She does so by denying us the resolution of identity confusion. We never quite reach the climactic reveal of Homer’s ‘Odyssey’, inverting our expectations (especially since Pulley loves an identity reveal; think of the brothers unmasked in ‘The Mars House’).

And the result of all this delightful play with Classical Greek source material? Does it make for a successful Natasha Pulley novel? Of course it does. ‘The Hymn to Dionysus’ is all shot through with that compulsion of a Natasha Pulley novel. (You’ll see how exquisitely she repays her readers for their attentiveness when she starts employing the motif of the colour blue.)

Pulley is distinguished by her inscrutable tone paired with a confessional narrative voice. There are multitudinous ways a writer can word a thing, and repeatedly, Pulley’s singular choices deliver a delicious jolt: ‘I was like sea spray. I slipped off people’s feathers. It was the same again and again: I clung for a little while, but before long, everyone remembered their real concerns, shook their feathers out, and flew.’

Even as a dedicated follower, I find it hard to pinpoint what it is she does and exactly how she does it: it’s future Mars; it’s an atomic city; it’s amnesia from time travelling; it’s alternative-reality Amazonian priesthood; it’s a flippin’ clairvoyant samurai and a clockwork octopus (if you liked ‘The Bedlam Stacks’, you’ll love the concept of the ‘marvels’ in this)! Yet somehow, all these diverse things read like Natasha Pulley: ‘Unholy devices, all of us - mechanisms bolted onto bone.’

In terms of classification then, you can’t compare ‘The Hymn to Dionysus’ to Madeline Miller’s ‘The Song of Achilles’ and Jennifer Saint’s ‘Elektra’, as the blurb states. Those novels are clear-cut narratives straightforwardly retold from Greek epic and Greek tragedy. Classicists must relinquish almost all but their most primal knowledge when reading this because it is – above all things – a Natasha Pulley novel! Under no circumstances should you play the I-will-know-who-these-characters-are-and-what-will-happen-to-them-because-I-have-a-Ph.D.-in-Classics game. I bombed at that within the first few pages.

Redemptively (or infuriatingly – your place along that particular spectrum is probably dependent upon your level of fanaticism for Pulley), defying classification, the author remains enigmatic; she does not authorsplain or Classisplain. She excavates the most elemental understanding of the Ancient Greek figure of Dionysus and his complexities: ‘He’s like wine. If you describe what he does, he seems awful, but if it’s happening to you, it’s lovely.’ It goes beyond words, my delight in the final passages of the book where Dionysus gives his backstory; from there to the book’s conclusion is some kind of rarefied thing. What a profound talent!

Reviewers are showing a tendency to highlight the following quote, and how very Natasha Pulley it is. The abstract of the novel in four lines? They’re right – this quote is it. My deep, deep gratitude to Orion Publishing Group for the opportunity to access the latest Pulley book early for review. I just did not want this to end:

‘Poseidon is the sea, and the tide won’t stop rising because no one sacrifices to him. Time is there, death is there, the earth, war, love. Even if there is some terrible place three thousand years from now where nobody remembers any gods at all, there will still be the sea and love [...] and madness. People will just have forgotten how to talk to them.’

There’s a lot of Greek mythology retellings out there, but this felt like something really special. I read an eARC of this book on NetGalley so thank you to the author and the publisher.

This felt like more of a personal imagining than a retelling. There was some really interesting world-building and it felt very different to any other books I’ve read in this genre. Even though there were many recognisable names, places and elements, there was something quite unique in their creation.

What stood out for me with this book above all else though was the atmosphere. The bulk of the story takes place during an intense heatwave that’s causing famine. And yet, there’s a pervasive darkness that seems to linger over the whole book. A shadowy vignette that is ever present. This was incredible, it gave the book almost an otherworldly feel to it. Given the content, with witches, extreme situations, madness, mechanical marvels this felt just so perfect for enhancing the story.

So much happens in this book and when you get to the end and reflect on how it all fitted together, you realise how brilliantly written it is. Everything managed to feel jarring as it happens, and then seamless upon reflection. This isn’t particularly horrifying but there’s a constant sense that’s unnerving as you progress.

I was impressed by this for being unique, bold and atmospheric.

I went into The Hymn to Dionysus hoping for something akin to Clare North's Songs of Penelope trilogy, but was left slightly disappointed. The two don't compare at all favourably. Penelope was an artfully crafted female-centric reworking of the legend of Odysseus and what happened on the island of Ithaca in his absence, but Dionysus, with the exception of a likeable cast of characters, consists of a highly confusing narrative and a central romance that's so slight that you could be forgiven for missing it. At one point Pulley even has a character recount Odysseus's tale, unfortunately this only serves to remind the reader of North's series .

Thanks to NetGalley, Bloomsbury Publishing and the author for an advance copy.

Pulley has blown me away once again with her latest offering. I thought I was tired of Greek myth retellings, but A Hymn to Dionysus has been a breath of fresh air to the genre. As always, Pulley combines a superbly crafted plot with fully realised characters that you can't help but root for!

A new Natasha Pulley novel will never cease to jump to the top of my towering stack of to-be-reads and once again she is doing what she does best - stunning storytelling woven around a central love story that happens to be queer. Pulley’s expertise in shifting settings and feels between books so effortlessly is apparent and this time we are treated to an ancient Greek epic tragedy. It deals with love, magic, obsession, timelessness and all things in between. I have neither the intellect nor the words to describe this adequately, so I’ll just leave you with “incredible”.
My thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley. This review was written voluntarily and is entirely my own unbiased opinion.

I generally really enjoy Natasha Pulley's books, (I loved 'The Mars House'), but I'm sorry to say I did not care for this. I found it difficult to engage with the characters, and I thought the story jumped about too much. Strangely, when I started to read the book I expected to enjoy it, as the opening sentence is brilliant, and really sets up Phaidros' character. He was an engaging child ((the parts about his childhood are interesting), but after that my interest waned. It just wasn't for me, I suppose. Perhaps her next book will be.
3 stars asIfeel sure a lot of readers will love it.

What an absolute joy of a book.

Phaidros is a Sown Knight, whose commander is Helios. One night at the Palace in Thebes Helios leaves the 4 year old Phaidros alone during a frightening thunderstorm. As he watches Phaidros sees a woman leave a baby in the open. Phaidros takes the baby before it gets hurt and ever after he seems to be encountering and saving the blue eyed boy who has strange and wonderful powers.

An adult Phaidros finds himself back at the Palace during an emergency - drought has hit Thebes and he is tasked with getting the Queen's son, Pentheus, ready to be sent to Egypt in return for grain supplies before the population starves. But Pentheus does not want to go so Phaidros calls upon the boy he knew (who he now believes to be a God) to save the city.

But as even stranger things begin to occur Phaidros does not know who to trust. Or even where his loyalties should lie - with the Queen or with the man he saved as a baby.

This book is funny and clever and I absolutely loved it. From the bizarre game of Surprise Badger to the way he speaks to a royal Prince, it's clear that Phaidros is an unusual being. The dialogue is brilliant, the story (as it unfolds) is wonderfully engaging. I've not encountered such loveable characters like Phaidros, Helios and Dionysus in a very long time.

A Greek myth story with a difference. Brilliant. Read it. I now need to read more Natasha Pulley.

Thankyou very much to Netgalley and Orion Publishing for the advance review copy. Very much enjoyed and appreciated.

Thanks to the publishers and net galley for an advanced ecopy in exchange for a review.
I delved straight into this Greek mythology retelling. The books follows Phaidros a knight from Thebes who has Helios as a commander from a young boy, the tale takes us through the highs and lows and the meeting of Dionysus. When there is a lost prince, a potential mad god and severe drought in the kingdom the Queen asks phaidros to assist with finding her son. I loved the writing which was poetic and atmospheric. I will be recommending and looking out for more books from this author.

Title: The Hymn to Dionysus
Author: Natasha Pulley
Pages: 416
Rating: 5/5
Spice/Romance level: ❤️

I'm already telling people how good a book this is and that they need to read it as soon as it's released.

I've adored Natasha Pulley as an author since I first read The Watchmaker of Filigree Street and wanted my very own katsu!! ❤️

This book did not disappoint. The opulent descriptions of the beautiful world and madness that's created. The twists and turns of storytelling. The slow intensity of the romance Vs duty.

It's also made me want to reread the bedlam stacks with descriptions of the mechanical gods to see if they're interlinked. (She has been known to do this in the past)

As someone who hasn't read the story of Dionysus, I couldn't tell you how close to the retelling of the story it is.

The book was heartbreaking in places. It offered hope and understanding. It showed kindness in a world of hate and restriction. And like her past books showed consequences of actions and how we treat other people.

You'll love this book if you like
- greek mythology
- found family
- queer romance
- slow burn
- duty and honour
- crown politics

Natasha Pulley’s best work so far. Poetic, romantic and full of tension and drama. I was a particular fan of the Ancient Greek Easter eggs scattered throughout.

The synopsis of this book felt like it was absolutely written for me. I’m a Classics graduate (I actually taught Classics, Latin and Ancient Greek for a while!) who wrote her dissertation on the evidence to support a mysterious cult to Demeter and who read and loved Greek tragedies in their original languages. The Bacchae, which this is based around, was always one of my favourites after reading it at “Greek camp” (an intensive 3 week Ancient Greek summer school).

We are introduced to Phaidros as a young knight who rescues a baby from a burning palace and then is commanded to leave him at a temple. For the majority of the book, he is a "Sown" commander, training new young recruits in Thebes, a city now ravaged by drought and famine, while a strange madness overtakes the knights. Meanwhile, he is guided by the witch Dionysus to help find the crown Prince, Pentheus, who has shirked his duty.

Rather than mythology, which is what many are expecting from this novel, for me it felt exactly like a crossover between a Greek tragedy and an epic Greek poem. Because I know The Bacchae, it felt a bit like I was reading with spoilers as I knew what was coming - I’m not sure how well known Dionysus and Pentheus’ backstory is. But this didn’t hinder my enjoyment of it at all.

It was cleverly written with fun little insights where the author breaks the fourth wall and speaks directly to the audience who are reading this in the future - it’s almost like a little nod to us to say: “Hey, isn’t it funny that they’re referring to something that you now know is true!” These were some of the highlights of the book for me as it had the feel of a real Greek tragedy where the characters would occasionally make little moves like this, letting the audience in on a secret, a nudge nudge, wink wink, sort of thing. Fans of Greek tragedy will love the nods to its classic storytelling techniques.

For example:

“And after all our world is gone and there’s no trace of us or marvels or Pylos and nobody knows if the war in Troy even happened, there it’ll be, and priests thousands of years from now are going to have huge gatherings about whether or not their ideas about us are supported by fourteen oxen and three barrels of apples to Poseidon!”

I enjoyed the use of words like deinos and xenia which threw me right back into the days of learning about these concepts at school - things that I had forgotten but were so integral to these cultures and storylines. It was nice to see them well explained and the importance placed on them to explain the motivations behind the storyline.

Some of the culture and themes are so different to ours that it’s hard to understand the motivations, but I loved how it threw you into a world that was similar but also so far removed that it feels alien. It’s a good eye opening experience to know that, even in the modern world, our culture can be so different from others.

I know some reviewers are not all that hyped up about this book being sold to fans of Madeline Miller, and I can see why the similarities have been pointed out by publishers but not understood by fans. I do think it is a very different style altogether, just like mythology and Greek tragedy would be. But personally, as a big Greek tragedy fan, this appeals to me even more than mythology based books.

And I know reviews have also said that it’s disjointed between the real world and the magical - tipping into magic realism - but that’s exactly what a Greek tragedy/epic poem/myth is. The writing is immersive, oppressive, and brilliantly evocative.

Her writing in this book has been described by others as modern and British, however I disagree. Pulley’s writing feels distinctly Ancient Greek, with its asides, satire, and rich world-building. As I've mentioned, the little asides to the audience, but also there are some fun, sometimes satirical, digs at the Athenians which the audience is meant to enjoy, and little passages which take the reader away from the main story for a moment or two to describe a situation as being alike to another situation - this had the epic Greek poem feel about it rather than a tragedy (or even comedy - with the digs at the Athenians!) play.

The setting in a drought and famine ravaged Thebes was oppressive and very well written - you could feel the desperation through the page. In addition to that, the characters themselves were well built - Phaidros is ravaged by guilt, he is a flawed character, but the relationship between him and Dionysus, how it grows and changes, is brilliant.

While I loved this, the book felt a little too long - at 60%, it felt like I’d been reading it forever, but that’s when it really got gripping and you felt like you got the meat of the story! There was a chunk of the book in the middle that seemed to drag on, where Phaidros and the story just kind of seemed to be meandering somewhat aimlessly. There were of course important parts in this for adding to characters’ personalities or storylines, little hidden references here and there, and these need to be interspersed with, for want of a better word, filler so that you’re not bombarded with important detail after important detail, but like I said, it felt a little longer than necessary. However, the writing was excellent enough and the world so fascinating that it didn’t make me even consider stopping reading it.

Thank you to Netgalley, the author and the publishers for an advance copy of this book.

The Hymn to Dionysus was a refreshing new reimagining of the Dionysus myth, and the genre of mythology retellings as a whole.

As a long-time Natasha Pulley fan, I went into this book with a certain set of expectations based on her previous books, and the works of Madeline Miller, Jennifer Saint etc. The Hymn to Dionysus was nothing like those expectations. This was tonally unlike anything Pulley has written in the past, in a way I really enjoyed. Writing from the perspective of Phaidros, Pulley captured his rough personality masterfully. His sardonic tone and way of seeing the world made for a quirky and unexpectedly funny reimagining, while still delicately handling heavy, and often devastating themes.

The Hymn to Dionysus was a true reimagining of myth rather than a retelling, and I enjoyed the way Pulley wove in additional chapters of Dionysus's mythology. That said, this did mean I found myself questioning the exact timeline, especially in relation to the Trojan War, and the way the events of the Odyssey were treated as distant mythology despite being reasonably current. As someone with a passable but not expert knowledge of Greek Mythology, I found myself unsure whether this meant Phaidros fought at a different Trojan War, or if these were legitimately errors. Ultimately I just decided to treat it as part of the reimagining, but I fear other reviewers will be less generous.

I'd probably hesitate to recommend this book to true mythology experts without some heavy caveats, but I would definitely recommend this to anyone with a casual interest, or to fans of Pulley's work.