After reading Stone Blind, I wanted to try another Greek retelling that centered women and so I decided to read Circe. I don’t know if it’s because I can compare it to Stone Blind or what but I loved this book so much! It gave me the best book haze when I finished reading it, I basically closed my kobo and wondered why the world was still here.

Circe is the retelling of well… Circe. If you haven’t heard of her, she figures pretty prominently in the mythology of Odysseus as the witch/goddess who turns sailors into pigs. In this book, Miller has drawn on almost all of the Circe myths I could see online to write an account of her life. The unfavoured child of the titan Helios and the sea nymph Perse, Circe is banished to exile when she foolishly declares that she can do magic, a threat to both Olympians and Titans alike. But her banishment keeps her in the island, it doesn’t prevent others from coming and the gods are capricious and so she meets Medea (her niece), she is called to her sister’s side when she births the Minotaur, and much more.

Pretty much from the start, it’s clear that the deck is stacked against Circe. Every power of hers is wrestled from the ground and comes from countless hours of toil. She is an interesting character, and I enjoyed how the book portrayed her wrestling with her victimhood, even if it made her unlikable. After all, one could understand why she turned the first group of rapist-sailors into pigs. But to turn every other group into pigs after without cause pushes the limits of how we tend to think victims should act. I don’t think I can ever approve of pre-emptively harming someone to protect oneself, but I can see why Circe decided to do that. She has cast herself as evil, though it’s questionable if she had an alternative given her personality and the circumstances.

Now that I’ve spoken a little of Circe, let’s talk about the other characters. I felt that Circe did what Stone Blind refused to do: treat characters as though they are intelligent. In Stone Blind, I felt that everyone except Medusa (and her sisters) was portrayed as having the character of overgrown, bad-tempered children. It’s not the case for Circe – Penelope is wise and a bit manipulative, Odysseus hides his cards close to his chest, and even the Olympians and Titans, self-centred as they are, are basically engaging in game theory as they gauge how far they can go without provoking another war. All these characters are formidable and in turn, it reflects well on Circe when we see her claw and fight for what she has, unlike Medusa whose life just felt… wasted if overgrown children were what she was up against.

Given that this is a retelling of Circe’s life, the plot doesn’t follow the usual structure. There aren’t any huge climaxes, though there are several tense moments. Still, there was enough happening that I enjoyed the book and felt compelled to keep reading another chapter.

All in all, I adored this retelling of Circe. It’s a sympathetic look at a character who normally plays a small part in the stories of others. I really appreciated that Miller cemented us from Circe’s POV (instead of switching POVs like ahem, Stone Blind) and let us experience Circe’s life through her eyes.