The Hymn to Dionysus
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- USD 20.99
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- USD 20.99
Publisher Description
A timely reimagining of the story of Dionysus-Greek god of ecstasy, revelry, and ruin-and a captivating queer love story for readers of The Song of Achilles and Elektra.
Raised in a Greek legion, Phaidros has been taught to follow his commander's orders at all costs. But when Phaidros 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 total secret.
Years later, struggling with panic attacks and flashbacks, Phaidros is enlisted by the Queen to find her son, Thebes' young crown prince, who has vanished to escape an arranged marriage. The search 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 queer love story about a man needing a god to remind him how to be a human.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
We loved this haunting take on the myth of Dionysus as one man’s quest for redemption. As a small child, Theban knight Phaidros Heliades rescued a blue-eyed royal baby. As a ship’s helmsman, he cared for a strange, blue-eyed boy who eventually sank the ship and turned most of the drowning sailors into dolphins. And as a seasoned and incredibly depressed leader of young knights in the city of Thebes, he meets an odd blue-eyed witch who encourages blasphemous music. How do these three people relate to rumours of a mad god whose infected devotees are toppling cities? And what if all of them are the same being? Natasha Pulley builds a beautiful, strange, and devastating world, yet Phaidros feels incredibly real. His desperation to be loved, his loneliness, the guilt he feels over the death of his lover, guardian, and battlemate Helios, and his inner turmoil between his sworn oath and his buried desire to be a kind person will all make you ache. We want Phaidros to find his happy ending in the midst of all the madness—and it might take madness to help him find it.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This fresh and stylish reimagining of the myth of Dionysus from Pulley (The Mars House) follows Phaidros Heliades, who, trained as a knight in the Theban army from childhood, grows up traveling all over the region with his regiment and his commander, Helios Poly. At age four, he and Helios visit Helios's sister, Queen Agave, where Phaidros discovers an abandoned baby—an encounter that ends in tragedy. Years later, Phaidros fails to protect a boy at sea, another tragedy. As an adult, Phaidros is stationed in Thebes and suffering from PTSD that manifests in flashbacks to the battle of Troy. He longs for the boy from the sea to return and take his revenge, a fate he believes to be inevitable. Despite his deep depression, he becomes entangled in the lives of the city's young prince and the queen, and with an enigmatic witch named Dionysus, who seems to appear around every corner. As drought, famine, and madness overtake the city, Phaidros is torn between the duty that has always been the driving factor in his life and the humanity he's learned to bury inside. In her singular voice, Pulley crafts a nuanced story that enthralls the reader until the very last page. Fans of Greek myth retellings won't want to miss this one.
