Medea: A Delphic Woman Novel

Australian author Greenwood retells the story of Jason, Medea, and the quest for the Golden Fleece in a historical every bit as good as her recent Egyptian historical thriller, Out of the Black Land. The narration alternates between Medea, the priestess of the ancient Greek goddess Hekate who betrayed her people and beliefs out of love for Jason, and Nauplius, Jason’s oldest friend. The main action shifts back and forth between Medea’s upbringing (including the beginning of her affiliation with the dark goddess) and that of Nauplius and Jason, first seen under the tutelage of the centaur Cheiron. Greenwood offers interesting riffs on familiar figures of myth, and impressively buttresses her biggest departure from the usual story in a scholarly afterword. She also makes the most of the dramatic potential in the journey of the Argo through dangers that anticipate Odysseus’s perilous return home after the Trojan War. The Medea-centric sections serve as a welcome counterpoint to Robert Graves’s Hercules, My Shipmate. (June)