"It's the hardest thing in the world to explain yourself, to tell your story clearly. We are all of us such complicated creatures, whether we have snakes for hair or not." The Gorgon Medusa, cursed with a stone gaze and a lifetime of bad hair days, is given a voice by acclaimed author Jessie Burton in her novella Medusa (Bloomsbury, £14.99), featuring vivid and evocative illustrations from Olivia Lomenech Gill.
In this retelling, Burton follows in the feminist tradition of reclaiming this allegedly monstrous woman, and in particular the more recent, post-#MeToo mode of considering Medusa in the context of rape culture.
Medusa’s punishment stems from her encounter with Poseidon in Athena’s sacred temple, and whether this is viewed as seduction or rape (the latter, in Burton’s case), the one constant is that she alone is blamed for this perceived transgression. When Athena tells her, “You knew what you were doing”, it’s an echo of so many other women blamed for the crimes of men, resonating fiercely with a modern audience. It would be lovely to live in a world where this fable is outdated; we do not live in that world.
But Burton’s tale is also a love story, albeit a thwarted one; when Perseus arrives at the island Medusa inhabits with her immortal sisters, he falls in love with her without ever seeing her, and she with him. “I wanted to eat him up like honey cake.” Merina, as she reinvents herself, tells him as much of her story as she can, and in turn he shares his. It all goes well until he reveals he is here “to cut off the head of the Medusa”. While this will come to as no surprise to readers familiar with the myth, it is still chilling when he utters these words, immediately depersonalising this girl whose voice we have carried in our heads and hearts for 160 pages.
This skilful reimagining is – as should be evident – aimed at a slightly older age range than Burton’s previous illustrated outing, The Restless Girls, although its handling of the subject matter is delicately managed. Medusa is an impressive addition to the shelves of feminist retellings, balancing rage with beautiful storytelling.
Irish author Riley Cain's engagement with myth is much more playful. Banshee Rising (Currach Books, €12.99) is packed with action and adventure, as 15-year-old Caitlyn is pulled into an epic battle that involves Newgrange, ancient kings and queens, and a ghostly Dublin in which a range of figures from history feature (Jonathan Swift, Robert Boyle and Buck Whaley among them). While Caitlyn has her own personal journey of discovery to undergo, including uncovering her true origins and beginning a relationship with the mysterious and haunted boy at school, the characterisation takes second place to the rollicking plot. This is a page-turner that will particularly appeal to younger teens.
It’s the end of an era for many other fictional worlds, most notably Malorie Blackman’s Noughts and Crosses universe. Over the past 20 years, the bestselling and critically well-regarded series has offered political commentary alongside dramatic love stories in an alternate world where Africa, rather than Europe, engaged in colonisation, and the privileged dark-skinned Crosses oppress the paler Noughts. The setting has let Blackman critique racism at an angle, deftly balancing a moral with compelling plots and relatable characters.
In Endgame (Penguin, £7.99), the sixth full-length volume (there have also been three novellas), Blackman concludes the tale first begun in Crossfire, in which two teenagers have been kidnapped as part of a tangled web of organised crime, political ambition and familial betrayal. The story moves back and forth in time, providing more context to some shadowy dealings, and eventually pulling all of the relevant characters together. If a little unsatisfying in its resolution of certain plot elements, it's nevertheless a solid ending for a character who has been with the series since the very beginning, and resists a pat neatness for others. For anyone invested in Blackman's world, anyway, not picking this concluding title up is not an option.
Rainbow Rowell also brings her Simon Snow universe to a close with Any Way the Wind Blows (Macmillan, £14.99), in which magical boyfriends Simon and Baz (one with dragon wings, one a vampire) return from an American road trip to find that a new self-declared Chosen One is threatening the World of Mages. At the same time, their friend Penelope works to release her new boyfriend from a demon engagement, and Simon's ex-girlfriend Agatha has a quest of her own that involves magical goats and perhaps a new love interest.
This is the least-compelling volume of the trilogy from a magical point of view, with big threats tackled too swiftly and some others, introduced in the previous book, left hanging. But that has never been really the point of Rowell’s work; like her contemporary fiction these stories are all about the banter between friends and lovers, and the complicated bits of romantic relationships that happen both before and after that vital first kiss. Light on fantasy, heavy on feelings – this book will appeal to romantics far more than fantasy devotees.
Dark magic, on the other hand, swirls around Deirdre Sullivan's Precious Catastrophe (Hot Key Books, £7.99) as we return to the Irish hellmouth of Ballyfrann, moving between twins Maddy (apprenticed to an old witch) and Catlin (causing havoc, as usual, and also possibly being possessed) as they uncover more of the town's unsettling secrets. Sullivan's ear for Hiberno-English and attentiveness to teenage worries makes this gorgeous horror tale all the more believable, and the plot skilfully builds on what's gone before without ever repeating or recanting it. This is a perfect Halloween read.
Benjamin Alire Sáenz returns to his beloved duo of Aristotle and Dante almost 10 years after they discovered the secrets of the universe. Aristotle and Dante Dive into the Waters of the World (Simon & Schuster, £8.99) picks up right where the first book left off, with the two boys now faced with negotiating their relationship and identities in 1980s America, where despite understanding parents, the wider world still views "gay" in the context of the Aids epidemic. The attentiveness to this historical period is slightly at odds with the first volume, but the voice of teenage Ari, who is trying to figure out the world and himself in that quintessentially adolescent (and indeed human) way, is still intensely endearing and relatable.
Finally, Holly Jackson's thriller trilogy concludes with As Good As Dead (Electric Monkey, £8.99), a tremendously satisfying close to Pip's story that sees the teenage true-crime podcaster turn murderer and use her knowledge to try to cover it up, while still seeking justice. The revisiting of a past murder allows for an enriching and complicating of previous reveals without ever undermining them; this book pulls together several threads while also moving the story in an unexpected direction. At its heart there is an understandable fury at a system that consistently fails to keep women safe, but Jackson resists too much lecturing on this point. This is a thoroughly enjoyable title and it will be fascinating to see what Jackson turns her narrative gifts to next.
