Monday, January 2, 2023

Five of the best novels featuring gods

Hannah Kaner is a Northumbrian writer living in Scotland. She works as a senior digital consultant in Edinburgh, delivering digital healthcare, tools, and services for the public sector. She has a first class degree in English from Pembroke College, Cambridge, and a Masters of Science with distinction from the University of Edinburgh. She is inspired by world mythologies, angry women, speculative fiction, and the stories we tell ourselves about being human.

Kaner's new novel is Godkiller.

At the Waterstones blog she tagged five favorite novels featuring gods, including:
Circe by Madeleine Miller

Circe is where we go full god. I inhaled Greek myths as a child, and studied Greek tragedies as a student, so developed a deep love of the capricious, silly, self-centred, cruel and potent gods that inspire Miller’s retelling.

Circe is a demigod beloved of neither gods nor humans. In the myths I read as a child she was antagonist, but in Miller’s tale she is a woman against a brutal world and a cruel pantheon. Through creativity and cunning, she makes a life in almost isolation that still intersects with a new perspective on Greek legends.
Read about the other entries on the list.

Circe is among the B&N Reads editors' twenty-four best mythological retellings, Ashleigh Bell Pedersen's eight novels of wonder and darkness by women writers, Kelly Barnhill's eight books about women's rage, Sascha Rothchild's most captivating literary antiheroes, Rachel Kapelke-Dale's eleven top unexpected thrillers about female rage, Kat Sarfas's thirteen enchanted reads for spooky season, Fire Lyte's nine current classics in magic and covens and spellsElodie Harper's six top novels set in the ancient world, Kiran Millwood Hargrave's seven best books about islands, Zen Cho's six SFF titles about gods and pantheons, Jennifer Saint's ten top books inspired by Greek myth, Adrienne Westenfeld's fifteen feminist books that will inspire, enrage, & educate you, Ali Benjamin's top ten classic stories retold, Lucile Scott's eight books about hexing the patriarchy, E. Foley and B. Coates's top ten goddesses in fiction, Jordan Ifueko's five fantasy titles driven by traumatic family bonds, Eleanor Porter's top ten books about witch-hunts, Emily B. Martin's six stunning fantasies for nature lovers, Allison Pataki's top six books that feature strong female voices, Pam Grossman's thirteen stories about strong women with magical powers, Kris Waldherr's nine top books inspired by mythology, Katharine Duckett's eight novels that reexamine literature from the margins, and Steph Posts's thirteen top novels set in the world of myth.

--Marshal Zeringue