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In a jewelry booth, I found something I could not identify. It was a tiny jar, the length of my finger, and hardly twice as wide.
I forgot everything as I held this amazing jar. I could see through it. The merchant dropped a shiny red bead into the jar and I could still see the bead. It broke all the rules of a container. It contained, but did not hide.
Anaxandra is a six-year-old girl on a tiny, nameless island in the Aegean Sea when she's kidnapped for the first but not the last time, taking nothing with her but a little stone statue of Medusa carved with octopus tentacles instead of snakes. She ends up on a bigger island as the companion to a princess, and discovers amazing new things like glass, horses, and stairs.
I won't give away much more of the plot, other than that she does eventually get entangled in the Trojan War, because it has a whole lot of twists and turns. It's fantastically readable and does a great job of defamiliarizing all sorts of familiar things, from a glass bottle to the story of Troy to the name "Helen of Troy," making them seem fresh and startling and immediate.
Anaxandra is a great character, wily out of necessity but afraid of offending the gods, prone to talking when she'd be better off keeping her mouth shut but also often able to maneuver into a better spot by fast talking. All the many characters are well-drawn and memorable, particularly the female ones. Andromache and Cassandra are heartbreaking and lovable, and Helen of Troy is terrifying-- part self-satisfied beauty queen, part half-divine eldritch horror in human form.
The atmosphere and historic details are excellent and vivid. Cooney includes an afterword which discusses her sources and the places where she departed from the historic/mythic record and why, and provides a concise update on what became of the characters she didn't invent.
Absolutely fantastic. I can't recommend this too highly.
If you've already read the book, look closely at the cover. It's clever as well as striking.
I forgot everything as I held this amazing jar. I could see through it. The merchant dropped a shiny red bead into the jar and I could still see the bead. It broke all the rules of a container. It contained, but did not hide.
Anaxandra is a six-year-old girl on a tiny, nameless island in the Aegean Sea when she's kidnapped for the first but not the last time, taking nothing with her but a little stone statue of Medusa carved with octopus tentacles instead of snakes. She ends up on a bigger island as the companion to a princess, and discovers amazing new things like glass, horses, and stairs.
I won't give away much more of the plot, other than that she does eventually get entangled in the Trojan War, because it has a whole lot of twists and turns. It's fantastically readable and does a great job of defamiliarizing all sorts of familiar things, from a glass bottle to the story of Troy to the name "Helen of Troy," making them seem fresh and startling and immediate.
Anaxandra is a great character, wily out of necessity but afraid of offending the gods, prone to talking when she'd be better off keeping her mouth shut but also often able to maneuver into a better spot by fast talking. All the many characters are well-drawn and memorable, particularly the female ones. Andromache and Cassandra are heartbreaking and lovable, and Helen of Troy is terrifying-- part self-satisfied beauty queen, part half-divine eldritch horror in human form.
The atmosphere and historic details are excellent and vivid. Cooney includes an afterword which discusses her sources and the places where she departed from the historic/mythic record and why, and provides a concise update on what became of the characters she didn't invent.
Absolutely fantastic. I can't recommend this too highly.
If you've already read the book, look closely at the cover. It's clever as well as striking.
