Only through cunning, wit, and her trusted circle of maids, can she maintain the tenuous peace needed for the kingdom to survive. But everyone waits for the balance of power to tip, and Penelope knows that any choice she makes could plunge Ithaca into bloody civil war. No one man is strong enough to claim Odysseus’ empty throne - not yet. But now, years on, speculation is mounting that her husband is dead, and suitors are beginning to knock at her door. Penelope was barely into womanhood when she wed Odysseus.

None of them has returned, and the women of Ithaca have been left behind to run the kingdom. Seventeen years ago, King Odysseus sailed to war with Troy, taking with him every man of fighting age from the island of Ithaca. But on the isle, it is the choices of the abandoned women - and their goddesses - that will change the course of the world. Beyond Ithaca’s shores, the whims of gods dictate the wars of men. This is the story of Penelope of Ithaca, famed wife of Odysseus, as it has never been told before. Due to be published in September, here’s the synopsis for Ithaca: North’s novels are fantastic: always different, packed with intriguing and interesting ideas and twists, and often surprising. It’s another novel in the growing body of mythological figure retellings (a sub-genre that has become especially popular in the last year or two).

I stumbled across this in an Edelweiss catalogue, and my interested was immediately grabbed: first by the cover, then realizing it was by Claire North, and then the synopsis.

Claire north ithaca review