A review by conspystery
Ariadne by Jennifer Saint

dark emotional sad tense slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.5

This book was underwhelming. Even calling it that feels like I’m giving it too much credit. I will note that I listened to the audiobook version, and have absolutely no gripes with that aspect. The narrator’s performance was well-fitting for the story and characters. My issues with this book are mainly in the writing of its characters, their development, and the message it tries to convey as a whole.

Seeing so many comparisons to Circe by Madeline Miller caused me to expect this book’s protagonist, Ariadne, to have the same amount of depth that Circe’s does. I expected a fresh, interesting perspective as the voice of the novel, one that would take agency and control over the narrative like the description of the book suggests. But I felt Ariadne was quite passive as a main character; her feminism can hardly be called that at all, considering how often she ponders the sexist definition of and treatment of women by men but does nothing to functionally combat it in the narrative, instead playing directly into the roles she resents with very little thought given to the implications of her actions. Even when she does take agency in the story, her actions are shallow and serve men in the ways she claims she hates,
Spoiler which is acceptable in Part One to set up irony but not so much as the book continues. Ariadne suffers emotionally from Theseus’s betrayal, but she learns nothing: she confirms her belief about the evil selfishness of men, but continues to play into it over and over without ever changing the way she acts throughout the book.
Her character development is a disappointingly repetitive cycle that fails to reach a satisfying conclusion. Any likenings of Ariadne’s protagonist and her development to Circe’s are laughable. 

Phaedra was briefly interesting as a character-- I liked her initial fire and bounce compared to Ariadne’s more subdued introspection, and how that evolved
Spoiler into near-scheming cleverness with her marriage to Theseus-- but she, too, fell into a poisonous internal refusal to learn from her actions. Her storyline in Part Three was particularly frustrating. It was an absurd departure from her character as it was established, diverting her development from the claiming of agency and independence to merely swapping allegiances to yet another man. I think Phaedra’s error in mistaking her need to be free for swooning, all-encompassing affection was the point of her story, as it was very briefly addressed at the end of Part Three, but the book does so little to make any use of such a thing as a warning: it reads more like a painfully predictable “I-told-you-so”, causing its emotional impact to fail to hit.
Her narrative is once again defined by men in the end, in a way that serves sexism rather than refuting it via poignant commentary, which is I think what the author was trying to present it as. 

The rest of Ariadne’s main cast fall into similar pits. Pasiphae is not granted nuance even by Ariadne, which reflects once again how poorly Ariadne embodies the beliefs she says she holds; Daedalus’s story is interesting but loses plot relevance and narrative attention far too quickly, when it could have been given more room to impact the story and characters as the book went on;
Spoiler Ariadne’s children are more narrative device than character, as are Phaedra’s; Theseus becomes a shallow husk as soon as his betrayals are revealed, and not in a satisfying manner;
and Perseus, though genuinely intriguing, is introduced far too late to be explored in detail. The most compelling character in this book is Dionysus. His jovial compassion for mortals is intentionally discordant with his divine detachment from them, and his treatment of Ariadne changes in a realistic, thoughtful way as the book goes on. He’s well-rounded and fascinating to read, his actions offering much to interpret and consider about his role in the narrative and his character in general. For how feminist this book claims to be, I find it interesting that the love interest man is given more depth than the woman protagonist-- not to say that Dionysus’s depth is bad, as it was one of the only parts of this book I enjoyed, but it reflects poorly on the novel that its attempt to convey a nuanced, feminist perspective from Ariadne’s point of view is so thoroughly outshined by Dionysus’s character. It is frustrating and disappointing to see characters with so much potential fail as they do here.

Further, the message of this book has questionable implications. Ariadne’s continuous disappointment by men serves as the novel’s theme: men are afforded privilege in society that they too often use to brazenly wreck the lives of women, because said women are forced unjustly to face the consequences for men’s actions. The nuance in this perspective somehow deteriorates over the course of the story as Ariadne is proven right over and over until it seems the book condemns men as a whole; by the end of the novel Ariadne views all men as inherently the same, fated to disappoint and destroy the lives of women forever. I don’t like this perspective. What of Daedalus, who treats Ariadne with kindness in her youth?
Spoiler Or the children she loves dearly, or Phaedra’s children, or Hippolytus?
In treating sexism as an unavoidable feature of all mankind, Ariadne presents a somewhat bleak, hopeless view of humanity, as well as ascribes blame to a collective rather than addressing the underlying issues at play-- one of the most insidious qualities of a sexist is the intention they have in adopting such a worldview, the part they choose to play to further sexism’s reach, but Ariadne completely ignores the harms of willfulness. The main character’s perspective is not feminist so much as it is accusatory, refusing to address her own hand in the sexism she continually falls victim to-- Ariadne has agency in the narrative, but never makes significant use of it, always pacing in philosophical circles as she aids her own victimization without taking any lessons from her continued tragedies. This inherency perspective lacks nuance and is unhelpful in meaningfully addressing sexism, which is best understood as a worldview bias that is played into rather than some kind of inevitability of men. 

Ultimately, I did not enjoy this book. The writing itself is decent but never stands out, and the pacing is strange and drawn-out with how repetitive the narrative’s themes are. Its messages are unfavorable and feminist only on a surface level, its characters serving as poorly-wrought examples of what it is trying to condemn. Possibly the most interesting way to read this novel would be as a fated tragedy, and to consider what it has to say about agency under destiny as viewed through Ariadne’s failure to learn from her mistakes or adopt a more reasonable, adjustable worldview-- how she creates her own helplessness through wilful inaction and rejects taking control of her life in favor of condemning the Gods and men for all misfortune, refusing to look deeper inwards even once. However, since it is billed so overwhelmingly as a feminist retelling, I don’t imagine that the agency in tragedy interpretation is what was intended by the author, and so I think it fails as the narrative it was written to be. It’s disappointing. I wish it had been the story it claimed to be, or had the potential to be, but I found it unfortunately lacking. 
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