A Touch of Ruin

St. Clair’s Hades x Persephone series belongs to a growing and popular subgenre of fiction that retells ancient myths of the Western world from the woman’s point of view. While 20th-century authors such as Mary Renault with The King Must Die, Marion Zimmer Bradley with The Firebrand, and Ursula K. le Guin with Lavinia established the appeal of this type of story, the ranks of classical retellings have more recently swelled with the works of authors including Margaret Atwood, Pat Barker, Madeline Miller, Claire North, Emily Hauser, and Natalie Haynes. Working within the cultural and historical confines of a conjectured historical era, these authors explore the female experience and themes of passion, empowerment, and betrayal that lie beneath the tales of war and conquest and of heroes and gods.

The story of Hades and Persephone is one of the oldest Greek myths, and the earliest mentions of Persephone date to the second millennium BCE, where she is also called Kore. In the version of the story most well-known today, Persephone, the goddess of spring, is the daughter of Zeus, the god of thunder and ruler of the upper realm, and