‘I watch Girl become Goddess
and the metamorphosis is more
magnificent than anything
I have ever known.’

Wonder at Medusa’s potent venom, Circe’s fierce sorcery and Athena rising up over Olympus, as Nikita Gill majestically explores the untold stories of the life bringers, warriors, creators, survivors and destroyers that shook the world – the great Greek Goddesses.

Vividly reimagined and beautifully illustrated, step into an ancient world transformed by modern feminist magic.

When it comes to poetry, things get complicated. I have a very specific idea of what poetry should look like: first and foremost, there needs to be a rhythm – if line syllable distribution is all over the place because the whole thing only consists of weird line breaks and stanzas so it looks like a poem, for me, it’s not. And then I like rhymes, though I don’t necessarily need them, they are just really nice to have. And then please give me lots and lots of stylistic devices. I’m a sucker for alliterations and repetitions and such.

Alas, this is probably why Great Goddesses didn’t work for me because I don’t consider this poetry. It’s more like fancy, really short short stories written in line breaks and my brain just automatically turns off being annoyed. There was hardly anything that caught my attention let alone hold it. I had no emotional connection whatsoever to any of the poems. And I do like Greek mythology.

The poems I liked best were among the “After” ones, maybe I could concentrate more on them because they didn’t have the form of fake poems and I also liked the idea of the gods being thrown into our contemporary world and how they choose to live their lives here quite a bit. Oh, and I liked the illustrations. But yeah, that’s about it. Sorry.