The Hymn to Dionysus

 By: Natasha Pulley  

Location: FIC PUL

Genre: Mythology

Glorious as Natasha Pulley’s books always are.

A timely and timeless reimagining of the story of Dionysus, Greek God of ecstasy and madness, revelry and ruin, for readers of The Song of Achilles and Elektra.

Raised in a Greek legion, Phaidros has been taught to fight for the homeland he’s never seen and to follow his commander’s orders at all costs. But when he rescues a baby from a fire at Thebes’s palace, his commander’s orders cease to make sense: Phaidros is forced to abandon the blue-eyed boy at a temple, and to keep the baby’s existence a secret.

Years later, after a strange encounter that led to the death of his battalion, Phaidros has become a training master for young soldiers. He struggles with panic attacks and flashbacks, and he is not the only one: all around him, his fellow veterans are losing their minds.

Phaidros’s risk of madness is not his only problem: his life has become entangled with Thebes’s young crown prince, who wishes to escape the marriage his mother, the Queen, has chosen for him. When the prince vanishes, Phaidros is drawn into the search for him—a search that leads him to a blue-eyed witch named Dionysus, whose guidance is as wise as the events that surround him are strange. In Dionysus’s company, Phaidros witnesses sudden outbursts of riots and unrest, and everywhere Dionysus goes, rumors follow about a new god, one sired by Zeus but lost in a fire.

In The Hymn to Dionysus, bestselling author Natasha Pulley transports us to an ancient empire on the edge of ruin to tell an utterly captivating story about a man needing a god to remind him how to be a human.

Review by Gabrileel

In the current tsunami of Greek mythology retellings, it can be hard to weed out the good ones from the bad ones. I’ve had my share of both over the last few years but let me tell you one thing: this is how it’s done. Natasha Pulley is an incredibly talented writer who knows how to make a story layered, personal and immersive. Sure, this is a retelling of a well-known myth, but she didn’t treat it like a paint-by-number project. She brings her readers directly in Phaidros’ mind and heart, so that we may see how he lived his life as a knight of Thebes, and how this life became intertwined with that of a young and unusual god.

I’m having a hard time finding a way to adequately summarize this book and why it’s so wonderful. When the story begins, Phaidros is the ward of Helios, the Theban queen’s brother, and that relationship will be a crucial influence on him, and is explored with great sensitivity. His life will take him to Troy, where he will wage war but also face devastating loss, and eventually make his way back home, but on his journey, he will meet a strange young man who will turn the ship he is held prisoner on into a tree and change the course of his life forever, especially when a wave of inexplicable madness falls upon his city.

This story is about duty and honor, but also about the nature of divinity, identity, madness, trauma and healing. It sounds like a lot, but Pulley is a very clever writer, and not a word in this book is useless, every tiny element serves the bigger purpose, making this book a rich tapestry that is great fun to explore.

Because it’s Pulley holding the pen, the plot is wonderfully labyrinthian (if you’ve read the book, you get the joke) and kept me on my toes until the last page. She maintains the ability she has displayed with “The Watchmaker of Filigree Street” of blurring the line between historical fiction and magical realism, and the setting lends itself perfectly to this talent: the Greeks famously saw magic and divine beings all over their daily lives, and she captures that idea beautifully. I think her characters sometimes feel a bit under-developed but they get more fleshed out as the book goes along, so I didn’t bother subtracting a star for that – though I wish we had more time to get to know Dionysus and Agave, who we really only know through Phaidros’ eyes – which may simply be the result of a first-person narration.

Speaking of which, one of the elements I really loved with this novel is that through Phaidros’ narration, we really get a feeling of the daily life in Thebes: his voice is conversational, often sarcastic and he swears a lot (I love him!), you know, the way normal people talk? No offense to the magnificent prose of “The Song of Achilles”, but I doubt conversations were this flowery and poetic all the time in ancient Greece; Patroclus and Achilles must have taken the piss out of each other at least once or twice. I especially enjoyed Phaidros’ interaction with the Egyptian ambassador, who’s poor opinion of the Greeks made me chuckle.

I currently lack the energy for my review to do the book justice, but if you enjoy classical mythology retellings, run to the nearest bookstore and get a copy of this gem, you will not be disappointed!