Continuing with my Greek theme for another post. There will be one more after this and then I'm switching locations.
I read almost all of Esther Friesner's Princesses of Myth series before. The only one I never finished was the last one she wrote and I'll get to that this time.
The series is in pairs of books, each about a mythical/historical female figure. The first pair set chronologically is about Nefertiti, but I decided to skip her in my reread and go right to the second pair of books, which is about Helen. I will get back to Nefertiti after I finish reading one more Greek book.
Friesner takes an odd approach to Helen, who's of course most often associated with her great beauty and not so great loyalty. She turns Helen into a beautiful child but then an awkward young girl who only grows more beautiful again as she goes through puberty throughout both books. Helen's twin Clytemnestra is the more typical female princess character, while Helen is turned into a tomboy, who wants to learn sword-fighting and such like her older brothers.
Helen gets into the habit early of dressing as a boy to get away with what she wants to do. She is allowed to learn sword-fighting and other warrior practices. Leda, her mother, tells her how she was a huntress while growing up in Calydon.
Clytemnestra is betrothed to a prince of Mycenae and Helen travels there along with her sister and two brothers. From there, Helen and her brothers are off to Calydon to take part in the Calydonian boar hunt. Helen meets Atalanta there, who helps her learn to ride horses.
On their return home, Helen and her brothers stop in Delphi, where the twin boys end up joining Jason on his quest for the golden fleece. Helen doesn't want to be left behind and comes up with a plot that allows her to go along on the quest, unknown to her brothers and once again in male disguise. Helen is assisted by the Pythia of Delphi, who was one of my favorite characters in both books, and Milo, a slave boy freed by Helen in Calydon.
The second book spends a lot of time following the trials of the Argonauts. Helen remains in her male disguise for a good chunk of the book, but is finally betrayed when she gets her period for the first time. She then claims to be Atalanta, which a lot of the sailors know isn't true but they go along with it for the prestige it will add to the quest.
When they arrive in Colchis, Helen has a new problem: Medea. The young girl is crazed with love for Jason...but she's also just plain off her rocker and portrayed as a rather demented, obsessive poisoner.
To escape Medea's attempts on her life, Helen dons her male disguise once more and heads for home alongside Milo. However, there's trouble in Athens and Helen soon finds herself in Theseus' clutches. Theseus has never been shown as a good character in either of these books, which is nice to see, considering he's one of those "hero" types. Helen eventually escapes and finally makes her way home.
The thing I like best about these two books is how Friesner creates realistic things that could have inspired the myths. She puts "Atalanta" in the Argonauts without using the actual Atalanta. The hydra was a knot of swamp snakes. The harpies were female warriors. Orpheus is one of the Argonauts and he says often how the truth doesn't make for the best story.
I did like these, but I find Helen an odd choice for this tomboy warrior princess. I suppose it works. I would have preferred to read about Atalanta though. My main problem is that Friesner turns Helen into a smart, cunning, strong woman who doesn't seem like she would turn into a complete idiot around Paris, run off and start a war. Helen loses her head over Hylas for a time on the Argo, but not to the extent that it's believable that she would so willingly abandon her husband and daughter in Sparta to run off with Paris. So yeah, my main criticism is that Helen became too strong a character for you to believe the future that would be hers.
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