That is sadly the only time she takes any action rather than passively accepting her fate in life. Ariadne decides to betray her father and help Theseus to defeat the Minotaur. With the arrival of Theseus, the brave Prince of Athens as one of the tributes, there is finally a hope to end this atrocity.

And while she gives us this familiar story from the unfamiliar perspective of Ariadne, who has been relegated to the sidelines in the original myths, Saint fails to bring anything new to the table.Īriadne, the naive and noble Princess of Crete abhors the annual sacrifice of 14 Athenian youths that her father Minos necessitated after defeating Athens in a war, to her brother, the Minotaur (understandably). In her debut novel, Jennifer Saint tells the familiar story of Theseus and the Minotaur he defeated in the labyrinth under Knossos. So, it breaks my heart that I didn’t love this book as much as I wanted to. And Ariadne being the newest addition in the Greek Mythology retelling trend, was one of my most anticipated reads for 2021. I will consume anything that is even mildly connected to it. Will Ariadne’s decision to help her lover bring her more sorrow than she bargained for?Įver since I was old enough to read on my own, I have been obsessed with Mythology. Especially in a world ruled by mercurial Gods where divine punishment is not always just and noble heroes often do ignoble things.

But helping Theseus means betraying their family and city, and the price of betrayal is high. When Theseus, the handsome Prince of Athens arrives at the shores of their city as a tribute, both the princesses lose their hearts to the noble hero and pledge themselves to his mission of killing the Minotaur. Every year, the city of Athens sends fourteen tributes to be eaten by the beast under the agreement brokered with Minos, the tyrant King of Crete.

In Ariadne, Jennifer Saint retells the slaying of the fearsome Minotaur of Crete at the hands of Theseus from the perspectives of the two Cretan Princesses, Ariadne and Phaedra.Īriadne and her sister Phaedra have grown up hearing the hoof-beats and bellows of the Minotaur, a half human-half bull trapped in the labyrinth under their palace.

Ariadne jennifer