This retelling covers Medea's life from childhood through her flight from Corinth to Delphi, from there to Athens and Herakles, and finally back to Colchis to restore her father to the throne.
If everything you knew about Medea came from Euripides, with perhaps a bit about the quest for the Golden Fleece itself throne in, you would find this to be a very different story. But a reader who has read at all about the background of Euripides's play will know that there are older versions of the story in which the people of Corinth were the ones who killed the children after Medea killed Creusa, for whom Jason was leaving her, and Creon. In light of that, this is very much a retelling, in the sense that there is little new for those who are already familiar with the other legends. It's told well, narrated half by Medea and half by Nauplios, one of the Argonauts, but there is little surprise in the plot, or indeed in the conception of the world for anybody who has read other historical fantasy set in ancient Greece or its neighbors.
Medea was one of my favorites when I was taking Classics courses as part of earning my Latin BA and I was excited by the prospect of something new when the reviews for this book began to appear. But while it was a satisfying way to spend some time, it was not particularly inventive, nor did I feel that anything new had been revealed to me.
Overall Grade: B-