The king of Minos (nanme*) has 3 children: , Ariadne and Phaedra. To revenge for an offence made to **, the god spell a cast on his wife Pasiphae so that she fell in love with a Bull. From this forbidden union is born the Minotaur, so savage and scary that it is trapped in a labyrinth developed by Daedalius. Every 9 years, Athens have to sent 14 children that are locked in the labyrinth to be fed to the Minotaur. Theseus, just proclamed son of the king of Athens, cannot tolerate this offence and comes to Minos to defeat the Minotaur. Ariadne falls in love with him, helps him escape the labyrinth and flee with him. But she gets left alone to the island of Naxos. On Naxos she meets Dionysos whom she marry and with which she have 5 children. Ariadne will die on the battle between Dionysos and his brother, wanting to prevent the brother from replying to an horrific act from Dionysos.
When Theseus comes back to Athens, he becomes the king of Athens. Minos, without the Minotaur, without Daedalius who escaped, and without the king who left to catch Daedalius, is getting weak. The brother of Ariadne offers Phaedra to Theseus to sceal an alliance with Athens. Phaedra goes then to Athens and soon discover all the lies of Theseus that she quickly despises. However she keeps quiet and participate to the politics of the city and raises 2 kids that she is unable to love. When Hippolytus, the son a Theseus, arrives in Athens, Phaedra falls in love with him. When she declares her love to him and gets a rejection, she gets scared that Theseus would eventually know so she hangs herself. When Theseus sees that, he blames Hippolytus and calls Poseidon who raise a wave that kills Hippolytus.
I struggle a little bit with the beginning of the book as people tell stories and I was a bit confused of which stories we were in. But the it flows more linearly and more easily and it gets very pleasant to read. Very similar to 'The song of Achilles', I enjoyed reading this modern way of telling for a mythological story.