The dramatic pacing and suspense in Kreinik’s performance will more than satisfy mythology fans and perhaps draw a new audience to the genre. It is a beautiful exploration of the bond of sisterhood, the challenges of womanhood and the desire to forge one's own destiny in a world dominated by the will of heroes and gods. For Ariadne, she falls in love with Theseus at first sight, and she devises a plan to help him make it safely through the maze.

No longer was my world one of brave heroes; I was learning all too swiftly the women’s pain that throbbed unspoken through the tales of their feats. Knew a little of Theseus and the Minotaur but now I have a vivid idea of the family involved and what befell them.In choosing to give a voice to a woman plagued by awful men—her father, King Minos; her first love, the hero Theseus; Dionysus, the god of wine—Saint succeeds in presenting a distinctive version of Ariadne. Poseidon sent the bull, the divine endorsement of Minos’ right to rule Crete, but its beauty was so great that my father believed he could trick the god and sacrifice another, inferior creature and keep the Cretan bull for himself. This is an essential book in the new and rising volume of retelling from the women's point of view - so revealing and questioning. There is more telling than showing, and characters launch into soliloquies that might make sense in a Greek tragedy but are out of place here. Pasiphae was beautiful, and her divine heritage had made her a magnificent prize to Minos in marriage.

I’d watched him construct the dancing-floor; I was an eager girl, hovering over him, impatient for it to be done, not appreciating that I was watching an inventor at work whose fame would ring through the whole of Greece. Here she would pause, her silence painting a more vivid picture of Orion’s pitiful struggles than her words ever could. But Pasiphae shrank and became smaller every day, even while her belly stretched and grew oddly misshapen with her strange baby. I saw her weighed down in the tumultuous water not just by the iron chains in which my father had bound her but also by the terrible truth that she had sacrificed everything she knew for a love as ephemeral and transient as the rainbows that glimmered through the sea spray.Saint's writing is slow, atmospheric, and character-driven, purposefully setting aside the action-packed male hero narratives of Greek mythology to work in an alternate mode. But helping Theseus kill the monster means betraying her family and country, and Ariadne knows only too well that in a world ruled by mercurial gods - drawing their attention can cost you everything. Jennifer Saint's ARIADNE is a shimmering tapestry of two sisters bound by deceit and the shadows of family history. This novel is an attempt to weave together elements from various myths to form one whole coherent story around the tragic figure of Ariadne.

When Theseus, Prince of Athens, arrives to vanquish the beast, Ariadne sees in his green eyes not a threat but an escape. Ariadne lives with the sound of hoofbeats beneath the palace, as the minotaur roams the labyrinth below. Ariadne is a fascinating character and it was so compelling to read the story from her point of view.Spinning and weaving a dizzying dance, creating an invisible tapestry with my feet across the dancing-floor: a miracle carved from wood, a superb accomplishment of the renowned craftsman Daedalus. When Theseus, Prince of Athens, arrives in Crete as a sacrifice to the beast, Ariadne falls in love with him. Due to a lifelong fascination with Ancient Greek mythology, Jennifer Saint read Classical Studies at King's College, London. Her second novel, ELEKTRA, was a Number One Sunday Times bestseller and explores the curse upon the House of Atreus, giving voice to three women who are caught up in its shadows: Clytemnestra, Cassandra and Elektra whose lives are shattered by the Trojan War and who seek to find justice at any cost. It was a tribute—seven Athenian youths and seven Athenian maidens brought every year across the waves to Crete to sate the appetite of the monstrosity that had threatened to shatter my family with shame but instead had elevated us to the status of legends.