Here, the World Entire

I haven't been this satisfied with a book in ages. I couldn't put it down. Powerful and heartbreaking. A poignant reminder that Medusa was a victim, not the monster that mythology made her out to be.

I knew it was coming and it still broke me. This was so beautifully written that it genuinely hurt to read.

I enjoy a good retelling and this one, though small and soft, is excellent. So much that is horrifying and unjust to our modern sensibilities gets brushed aside as a mere footnote to the caprices and apathy of the gods in Greek mythology. I guess to be grand, epics must sweep over the inconsequential suffering of mortal side characters that shape them into the monsters to be overcome. This retelling dives into that footnote and blows it up into sharp, stark relief. And it's beautiful, but so full of pain. The story is self-contained and tense, fraught with Medusa's guilt over what she is and what was done to her and underscored with the reader's foreknowledge of what fate befalls her. Perseus is difficult to reconcile with what we already know about him from his own story, especially as we read through Medusa's perspective. I wondered how far this retelling would stray from the original; I shouldn't have. I knew how this story would end, but I didn't know that I would feel bereft when it ended.

Such a beautiful beautiful short story that really asks the question, what makes a monster, a monster?

oof that ending hurt