By Jennifer Saint
- Pub Date: 2024
- Genre: Retold mythologies
- Where I bought this book: Roebling Books & Coffee, Covington, Ky.
- Why I bought this book: I wanted to hear Hera's perspective
- Bookmark used: Ordinary Equality / No new world order until woman are a part of it
Hera always has been a goddess who's hard to pin down. In the pantheon, she seems to serve little purpose -- although she is the queen of the gods and the goddess of marriage, she maintains little control over her own. Her cheating husband -- and brother -- never treated her as an equal partner, despite their history of taking down the Titans together.
Thus, Hera is always portrayed as unhappy, unliked, and unwanted. Like many of the gods, she is vain and vindictive, haughty and deceitful. Her role on Mount Olympus is ill-defined.
And while this book sets out to define Hera, we can't help but see her as the same -- morose, vengeful, and superfluous. Near the end of the book, one of the immortals, Ekhidna, a primordial dragon, tells Hera she has let her husband and brother define her.
All you want is to outwit Zeus. With his nymphs, his girls, his bastard step children.
I had hoped this book would help redefine Hera, but it didn't. Instead, it told familiar stories about Zeus' deceptions and cruelty, and Hera's envious and equally cruel reactions. Instead of helping us relate to Hera, it showed her as just another god who has little time for others.
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