Reviews with content warning for Death of parent - Lies We Sing to the Sea

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Lies We Sing to the Sea by Sarah Underwood

35 reviews

dejahentendu's review against another edition

hopeful

3.0

It was an interesting extension of the Odyssey, focused on the fall out of his punishment of the serving women he murdered after retuning home.

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lyall_reads's review

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sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

1.5

1.5/5, rounding up because it’s objectively better quality than most things I rate 1 star.
Because I love reading about vicious, complicated sapphics and I hate review-bombing, I gave this book the benefit of the doubt only to end up angrier at it than I have been at any book for a while. I was with it for about the first third, but when they got to Ithaca, everything imploded.

I won’t blame the book for the poor marketing- I knew going in it was not an Odyssey retelling, despite the marketing. I also knew it wasn’t going to be well-researched going in but was fully ready to just treat it as a Greek-inspired fantasy world; as long as the world feels cohesive and fantastical, I can let go of a lot. Underwood, however, made the baffling choice to both under-research AND tie the story to a clear time period. There’s reference to the Peloponnesian war and I am no scholar of Ancient Greece (I was more of a Rome-obsessed kid) but even I remember from seventh grade history that Athens was a democracy at that time. There’s so many weird little things like that which add up. I don’t think it was a good move to tie the world of the story to actual history; it would have been much better to have had less time have passed since the Odyssey and tie it more closely to the mythic world.

The biggest problem: I didn’t like Leto. It’s okay to not like every character in a book, but I felt like I was meant to like her and I just didn’t get it. She’s impulsive, bloodthirsty at strange moments while refusing violence in others when peoples’ lives depend on her, and she’s a cheater. I grew to hate her as I saw how she treated Melantho. There’s a world where she talks things through with her and there’s some ethical non-monogamy or more run-of-the-mill love triangle stuff where she’s not with either of them, but nope. No communication allowed! There are people like Leto out there, who act selfishly and chose to view actions taken with men as not cheating on the femmes they’ve made a commitment to- I’ve even been in a relationship with one of them!- but they are not fun to read about as what I think was meant to be a likeable main character. I’m all for letting queer character be messy (that was my favorite part of Love Lies Bleeding!) but there wasn’t a strong enough bedrock of character underneath Leto’s off-putting decisions. She ended up feeling more like the ‘cheating bisexual’ archetype than a fleshed-out flawed person, and I hate that.

I did like Melantho, but as soon as she meets Matthias, she becomes off-puttingly jealous and possessive. We, the readers, know Leto is thinking about cheating on her constantly, but Melantho doesn’t yet. Without the insight we have into Leto’s thoughts, it doesn’t make sense for her to immediately view the man she and Leto ARE PLOTTING TO MURDER primarily as a romantic rival. She’s right, but she couldn’t know that yet so her actions felt out of character and like a writing mistake more than anything else.

This book also hits my pet-peeve- all women besides the main character (and in this case, the love interest) are either dead or evil. We have the dead, good women who shaped Melantho, Matthias, and Leto: Ophelia, Thalia, Selene, Timo; and we have the evil women: the queen, Olympia, the romantic rival. We also get some child girl characters, but it seems if they’re not Melantho or Leto and reach adulthood, a woman becomes either evil or dead and I HATE that.

Pros: the audiobook narrators were great! I liked Underwood’s writing style quite a bit and found it to be very readable. There’s a few fun, claws-out, wlw moments. Melantho and Mathias have a nice bonding moment I appreciated.
TLDR; don’t read this. Read the Penelopiad for a feminist angle on the Odyssey and the story of the maids’ murder. Read The Midnight Girls or An Education in Malice for YA/NA fantasy with feral sapphics.

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captainchloe__'s review

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adventurous mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

I was reading this book thinking it was YA, and I will say the content towards the end got quite graphic so just be aware of that. Also, as many have said, it's not a retelling. It's a reimagining of what could have happened next. My main issue with this book is that some aspects of it were not historically accurate - one of the characters, in ancient Greece, uses the phrase "Latrine" which is a Latin word in origin?? As a classicist who focused on politics in ancient Greece, I also haven't read the Odyssey fully, like the author 🤣🤨, but I aim to one day be that confident and have that much audacity.
Overall, if you can look past the audacity, I enjoyed this book, the plot was interesting and the characters were engaging. It was a bit teen drama at points, but overall it was a... It was a read. I read it. Yay. And finally, between the halfway point and the end, it was clear that Melantho's eyes were, in fact, green, and did not change colour.

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summerspence's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I’m wrapped up in the post-reading-endorphin-rush, so I want to give it a higher rating, but I can’t. I think I’m already being generous. There’s just something about Greek myths… However, this is so loosely related (read: under-researched and oversold as something it isn’t). According to the author, this is a feminist retelling of “The Odyssey”, except she didn’t read it/do additional research or include the other 99% of the original story. She admitted she gathered info from “Percy Jackson” and other stories. To me, there needs to be more than 1% to be considered a retelling. The historical details are also very inaccurate for 4th century BCE.

Even with all of that, there are so many plot holes and straight up UNCLEAR details that really do make a difference to the story. The reader is just supposed to accept that things are the way they are because the internal monologue of the MC says so.

So, why give it 3 stars then? Idk, I still kind of liked it 🤷🏻‍♀️😂. There really is a story there, and I do think that some of the writing is very beautiful, even if it was full of holes and inaccuracies.

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em_of_swags's review against another edition

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emotional mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

why is it always a tragedy, can I be allowed happy books for once?

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thelily_library's review

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adventurous dark sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

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theinkedpath's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

ES:

Este es un libro complejo de reseñar.
¿Me ha gustado? Sí. ¿Me esperaba más? También.
Creo que ha habido mucha controversia con este libro por el concepto y por el hecho de que la autora a confesado no haber leído nunca el texto original de la "Odisea", ha empañado un poco esta novela en general.
Esta novela se vendía como un retelling de la Odisea, pero no lo es. Es una continuación (cientos de años en el futuro) de un solo capítulo de la Odisea. La mejor forma de describirlo sería: "¿Qué pasaría si al colgar a las sirvientas de Odiseo y Penélope se desatara una maldición sobre Ithaca en donde, salvo que se cuelgue a 12 mujeres inocentes, Poseidón inundará la ciudad?'. Esto es lo que se presenta aquí. Y en el centro de todo esto Melantho y Leto dispuestas a que esto no pase nunca más.

¿Con esta premisa era necesario leerse la Odisea para escribir una novela con mitología griega? Puede que hubiera sido deseable pero no obligatorio porque no es un retelling directo. Y pienso lo mismo sobre su lectura: puedes leer este libro sin necesidad de leer la Odisea.

Dicho esto, ¿que pienso yo de "Lies we sing to the sea"? Me ha parecido una propuesta interesante, con una trama y unos personajes complejos que tienen muchos secretos ocultos. Me ha encantado la forma tan detallada y estilística de escribir, llena de florituras, que me ha recordado mucho a los textos clásicos. Sin embargo, no es oro todo lo que reluce. Aunque me han gustado la complejidad inicial de los personajes, tengo que reconocer que creo que a veces su forma de actuar no era acorde con cómo se nos presentaban previamente, siendo, en ocasiones, inmaduros, torpes o simplemente ciegos. Como punto negativo también debo indicar que la narración tiene problemas de ritmo, siendo durante largos fragmentos del libro muy lenta y sin rumbo y, sin embargo, en su último tramo creo que ha pecado de acelerada y de que algunos hechos y revelaciones aparezcan o se les ocurran a los personajes por arte de magia.
¿Me ha gustado? Sí, pero esperaba más, aunque entiendo que, siendo la primera novela de Underwood tiene mucho que evolucionar.

EN:

This is a tricky book to read because of its controversy...but her we go.
Controversies:
-Firstly, the concept. This story was marketed as a retelling of 'The Odyssey" but it is not. It is a fantasy story that takes one chapter of 'The Odessy', the hanging of the Penelope´s maids and uses it to build up a fantasy story that happens hundreds of yers after that event. To me, that is not a retelling, but a follow up of the story, a what if if you will. Therefore, I did not feel offended by the use of the original text through the story (because the novel itself is a new product on its own).
-Secondly, the fact that the author had not read 'The Odessy' by Homer. I do not see it as alarming as I have read in some places. Should she have read the original text prior writing the story? Probably it would have been a good idea, for research, context and tone for example, but I do not consider it compulsory. The story itself I read it as if a "what if". What if, after the hanging of the maids, Poseidon cursed Ithaca and Odyseus´s family for their cruelty towards the maids by threatening to drown the city? The only way to stop this from happening is hanging 12 young innocent people each year as payment to the God. However, hundreds of years later, our protagonist, Melantho and Leto, decide to break the curse by killing Odysseus's descendant, Mathias. With this premise I do believe that the author introduced enough elements let the reader know the classic passages it refers to while having a new story. So, to me, the fact that she did not read 'The Odyssey' is not that bad. I think the author could have benefit from it, but it is not the end of the world. And I hold the same opinion for the readers: you could read 'The Odyssey' before reading this book to have more context and connect all the references, but you can also jump directly to Underwood's novel (which is what I did although I want to read the classic story too).

What do I think of this book?
This is a complex question because I liked it but, at the same time, I expected more from it and saw a few flaws. Let me explain:
I really like the concept of the story and how it was presented to us. I also loved the characters and how grey the were, specially the three main characters, with their multiple layers. I also love the very crafty way in which Underwood used the language and her writing craft, producing a very flowery prose that conjured beautiful scenes in my head. In this particular aspect, her writing reminded me of the classic text such as 'The Iliad'. However, this book has flaws as well. Firstly, it has problems regarding the narrative reading as it has really big portions of the book in which the action is very slow and, then, in the last third of the book everything happens very quickly and, some of the revelations happen too quickly or out of nowhere. As for the characters, though I love their complexity, I do believe that sometimes they behave in a way that goes against their previous behavior or in a very immature or irrational way producing that, sometimes, the enchantment around the character personality breaks producing in the reader a sense of inconsistency.

Does this mean I dislike the book? No. I like the book, but I do feel that some aspects of it could be improved more to make the story reach its full potential, as well as meeting the good aspects I listed before. However, this is the first book of the author and I am confident she will get better as she writes.
So, in the end, is a 3 stars book. Let's see what Underwood writes in the future

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