I… don’t know how I feel about this book. I enjoyed it well enough. Unlike some other Natasha Pulley books, it didn’t completely captivate me. I certainly don’t think it was bad though.

Because it did captivate me at first. The first chapter is from the point of view of a 4-year-old knight. And his guardian is a 15-year-old who is also a knight and is caring for this 4-year-old and is very sweet to him. And it’s just such an absurd situation for us in our modern lives, the way this whole Greek legion thing worked, but intriguing in the context of this fictional moment. And then the 4-year-old, who is also very sweet, is obsessed with a baby. And the 4-year-old doesn’t understand what’s really going on and really being said between the adults (teens), and I’m over here like, I’m an adult, am I supposed to understand? I have no idea what’s going on, but I’m intrigued. And then things happen! Action! Magic! And imagine being a priestess at a temple and then a 4-year-old shows up on a horse with a baby and says he doesn’t know where his commander is. I was enthralled! And you have no idea what I’m talking about.

But then the story became very meandering. I never really had a sense of what we were working toward or building up to. Which can work, but, when combined with my next point, it didn’t work perfectly for me here.

I was going to say that I don’t think I quite “got” this book, but actually I think I did. I think I understood most everything by the end. It was just that it was a strange book with strange stuff sometimes.

In typical Natasha Pulley fashion, the main character was not what I would call a good person. (Actually, it wasn’t always the MC who filled that role in the other books I’ve read, but there was still someone who did.) Not by our standards, at least, and maybe not by the standards of the setting, depending on who you asked. But he also wasn’t all bad or all unlikeable or some mustache-twirling villain. He was very much a product of his time and the way he was raised. Literally raised as a child soldier, where children were raising other children, and violence was constant, and things like slavery or dying in battle before you turned 30 were normal, and duty was everything. Sometimes he lacked empathy, because very little was given to him and he believed in duty above all else, but other times he showed a surprising amount of empathy and kindness. And it was all presented matter-of-factly. Here is the character. Readers, make your own decisions. That is something I love about Pulley’s books. She doesn’t try to hide or make you forget the unlikeable parts of a character, nor does it ever feel like she’s trying to force you to like them. She just gives them to you as they are. And… I don’t think I liked Phaidros as a whole. But that’s ok, because I still liked some things about him and found him complex and enjoyed getting this story through his perspective.

Helios wasn’t in the book much, but I did like him. Granted he probably had a lot of the same flaws and beliefs. Maybe I only like him because I only saw him in snippets, mostly through Phaidros’s reverent eyes. (This is still a point in the author’s favor, that she can get so deep into a character’s POV.) But almost everything shown of him was his kindness, was a teenager and then a man, also raised in this same awful child soldier situation and bound by duty, doing his best.

I don’t have much to say about Dionysus, which is sorta funny since he’s the god, he’s the one in the title. Maybe that is actually another reason this book didn’t fully click with me. Not because I cared so much about reading a Dionysus retelling, but because Phaidros had all these feelings about him, I guess, and it’s clear he was important to the story, but I couldn’t tell you much about him.

I’ll also mention, the official description calls this a love story, but the romance was more hinted at and implied than super present. If you’ve read other Pulley books, I think you’ll get what I mean. It’s not like it’s being hidden, it’s just sort of vague.

The audiobook narration by Sid Sagar was great! Sounded natural, was enjoyable to listen to, and I think voices were slightly different? To be honest, I can’t remember how different they were, but I was never confused about who was speaking.

This book was a little too odd and meandering, and I didn’t feel enough draw to the characters, but I still really liked how flawed Phaidros was and how immersed the story was in the world and his POV. There were times when it struggled to keep my focus, other times when it pulled me in, and overall it was interesting enough to keep listening.

*Rating: 3.5 Stars // Read Date: 2025 // Format: Audiobook*