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juushikaTitle: The King Must Die
Author: Mary Renault
Published: New York: Random House, 1988 (1958).
Pages: 338
Total pages: 13, 191
Text number: 37
Read for: for my personal enjoyment, recommended and lent by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
spelunkingplato.
In brief: The King Must Die is a retelling of the Greek myth of Theseus, following the hero from the contested fatherhood of his early childhood, through his Kingship at Eleusis, to his time at Crete as living as a bull-dancer, ending with the successful journey through the labyrinth and the slaying of the Minotaur. The text humanizes the mythic figure of Theseus, giving him mortal weaknesses and human wants, while at the same time preserving a sense of power and destiny through moira the scope, possibility, responsibility, and end of every man's life. The end result is a realistic yet still heroic tale, fairly easy to read, with an interesting and motivating concept of fate. I would recommend it to those who like myths, specifically Greek myths; it's not a world-changing book but it is a fairly enjoyable read.
I'm not entirely sure I have much more to say about this text. It is what I've already described it as: a humanized retelling of a classic myth with an emphasis on the idea of fate. The idea of fate that the book considers and revolves around is quite interesting. Unlike some Calvinistic concept, fate, or moira, in The King Must Die focuses on ability and life just as much as it does death. Fate is not only how a man will end up, but also what a man can and must do. The concept is empowering and even comforting to both Theseus and the reader because it provides divine support to even the greatest ambition. If I were religious, I think that is how I would want the divine to function in my own life: leading me to greatness but also constraining me to my abilities.
For all of that, there is something a bit clunky, a bit heavy-handed about the text. Books written to affect a certain style or national sense often feel that way to me (you may remember my problems with Memoirs of a Geisha). Here, Renault appears to be imitating whatever she thinks Greek thoughts or writing to be like. I can only assume that's what she's doing—otherwise, her writing style itself is choppy, using over-definite sentences, hard end-stops, and cut and dry physical descriptions. The effect, while readable, taints the human aspects that she has worked so hard to give to the text. While gritty detail and lust may be human, robotic sentence structure is not. In the end this may be a quibbling fault, but it distracted me throughout the book.
I was impressed by idea more than execution in this book, but I'm ok with that. It's an imperfect text, but the realistic, pre-myth version of the Theseus story is an interesting read and the concept of moira is thought-inspiring. I recommend the book only tentatively, and would rather readers check out some really great literature instead, but I would still recommend it. It's a pretty good, interesting text.
Review posted here at Amazon.com.
Author: Mary Renault
Published: New York: Random House, 1988 (1958).
Pages: 338
Total pages: 13, 191
Text number: 37
Read for: for my personal enjoyment, recommended and lent by
spelunkingplato.In brief: The King Must Die is a retelling of the Greek myth of Theseus, following the hero from the contested fatherhood of his early childhood, through his Kingship at Eleusis, to his time at Crete as living as a bull-dancer, ending with the successful journey through the labyrinth and the slaying of the Minotaur. The text humanizes the mythic figure of Theseus, giving him mortal weaknesses and human wants, while at the same time preserving a sense of power and destiny through moira the scope, possibility, responsibility, and end of every man's life. The end result is a realistic yet still heroic tale, fairly easy to read, with an interesting and motivating concept of fate. I would recommend it to those who like myths, specifically Greek myths; it's not a world-changing book but it is a fairly enjoyable read.
I'm not entirely sure I have much more to say about this text. It is what I've already described it as: a humanized retelling of a classic myth with an emphasis on the idea of fate. The idea of fate that the book considers and revolves around is quite interesting. Unlike some Calvinistic concept, fate, or moira, in The King Must Die focuses on ability and life just as much as it does death. Fate is not only how a man will end up, but also what a man can and must do. The concept is empowering and even comforting to both Theseus and the reader because it provides divine support to even the greatest ambition. If I were religious, I think that is how I would want the divine to function in my own life: leading me to greatness but also constraining me to my abilities.
For all of that, there is something a bit clunky, a bit heavy-handed about the text. Books written to affect a certain style or national sense often feel that way to me (you may remember my problems with Memoirs of a Geisha). Here, Renault appears to be imitating whatever she thinks Greek thoughts or writing to be like. I can only assume that's what she's doing—otherwise, her writing style itself is choppy, using over-definite sentences, hard end-stops, and cut and dry physical descriptions. The effect, while readable, taints the human aspects that she has worked so hard to give to the text. While gritty detail and lust may be human, robotic sentence structure is not. In the end this may be a quibbling fault, but it distracted me throughout the book.
I was impressed by idea more than execution in this book, but I'm ok with that. It's an imperfect text, but the realistic, pre-myth version of the Theseus story is an interesting read and the concept of moira is thought-inspiring. I recommend the book only tentatively, and would rather readers check out some really great literature instead, but I would still recommend it. It's a pretty good, interesting text.
Review posted here at Amazon.com.
