2024/073: Herc — Phoenicia Rogerson

2024/073: Herc — Phoenicia Rogerson

Maybe I was beautiful enough to launch ships, after all. But when I looked down I saw blisters on my hands from scrubbing blood from the floor. That was the wife I had to be.[loc. 643]

I've had variable experiences, and some great disappointments, with the current flood of retellings of Greek myth, so I was trepidatious about Herc -- especially when I saw it described as a 'queer feminist retelling'. My reservations were unfounded: it is immense fun, vastly tragic, and told in a multitude of voices that are distinctive in themselves, even if the names (Iolaus, Iole, Iapetus) can confuse those unfamiliar with the minutae of the myth.

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