And also
74. The Wandering Queen by Claire Heywood
A retelling of the story of Dido. I’d vaguely heard of the Dido story though The Aeneid, but it’s not one that I’m very familiar with, so this was mostly new to me.
She’s referred to as both Princess Elissa (in her early life in Tyre) and Queen Dido (after leaving Tyre and when settled in Carthage) which threw me a bit at first.
It was an interesting read. I liked the bits set in Tyre the best, with her first husband and the problems with her younger brother that led to her and many others fleeing Tyre. I didn’t find the romance with Aeneas particularly convincing. At times it feels more like Dido’s more in love with the prospect of being a second mother to Aeneas’s son than she is with Aeneas. The abandonment is foreshadowed early on, and Aeneas is increasingly dissatisfied with being in a relationship where Dido’s the queen and he’s just a consort.
The afterword, where Heywood talks about the source myths and stories, was very interesting.
Apparently Dido and Aeneas would never have met, as the likely timeframe for the Trojan War precedes the founding of Carthage by several centuries, and when The Aeneid was written, Virgil was criticised for his anachronistic addition of Dido into his epic poem. But Heywood’s kept the doomed romance in her retelling, as that’s now become the most well known version of Dido.
75. My Hero Academia Vol 9 by Kohei Horikoshi
There’s villains attacking the summer training camp in this instalment. As full of action as one would expect, and it’s ended on a cliffhanger as a character’s been kidnapped by a newly introduced villain.
76. She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan
I really enjoyed this. It’s a reimagining of the rise to power of Zhu Yuanzhang (born Zhu Chongba), who was a peasant rebel who unified China and became the founding Emperor of the Ming Dynasty.
The author’s basically asking, what if Zhu Chongba was a girl, and takes it from there.
The story starts with a famine stricken village, and a seer who declares that the son of a peasant family is destined for greatness. His sister isn’t.
But when their father is killed in a bandit raid, the son gives into despair and dies, and the girl resolves to seize her brothers glittering destiny and takes on her brother’s identity, joining a Buddhist monastery before joining rebel fighters when the monastery is destroyed.
She’s very clever, and very, very ruthless and ambitious.
This is a period of history that I knew nothing about, and it was a fascinating read.