Those Fatal Flowers by Shannon Ives
Publication date: January 21, 2025
Genres: Debut, Fiction, Fantasy, Historical
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While my fascination surrounding the legend of Troy has waned (I can only watch Eric Bana and Brad Pitt in the movie so many times) my curiosity about mythology has not. Those Fatal Flowers is a genre-bending tale of a handmaiden to a goddess who is cursed for her carelessness, but has the opportunity to save herself and her sisters if she can complete a heroic quest.
Quests are a common element in Greco-Roman myths, but usually embarked upon by a man. In Those Fatal Flowers, the hapless Thelia has been exiled with her sisters to an isolated island where they must live as winged beasts with the faces of women. Her crime? Allowing Proserpina, the goddess of spring, to be kidnapped by the god of the Underworld. The women live for centuries in a grisly cycle of luring ships to their shores to devour the men on board, but Proserpina herself reaches out with a plan that would allow the sisters to regain their immortality. Thelia must now venture into the world of mortals in the guise of a woman, with six months to execute this mission.
Thelia’s guilt is compounded by her grief over losing Proserpina, who was her lover. When she meets a woman in Roanoke who looks just like her the wound is reopened. This, plus the fact that the small colony is comprised of Puritans makes Thelia’s mission even more difficult. The combination allows author Shannon Ives to go full throttle on the situations and emotions that arise in a puritanical, patriarchal society. This made Those Fatal Flowers, with its covert and overt male violence and its female rage, a ’right book right time’ for me. Definitely an author I want to read again.
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*I received a free copy of this book from Random House in exchange for an honest review.*
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