Olympus, a looming obligation to join her detested father, Zeus, spurring her to hide where he could not reach.

The Dark Wife twists those ideas, challenging nearly every step of the common myth – Persephone seeks out the Underworld herself after a compelling chance introduction to Hades at Mt. It’s a story of despair, of a mother’s loss, and the changing of the seasons. It’s a story I find enjoyable to begin with, but I’ve always been a fan of Greek myth what really excited me about the story was that the author decided to make Hades a woman as well.įor those unfamiliar, the story is generally told as Hades abducting Persephone and tricking her into staying in the Underworld to be his queen. Without spoiling too much in this introduction, it’s a revisionist retelling of the story between the Greek lord of the Underworld, Hades, and the goddess of spring, Persephone, daughter of Demeter and Zeus. It’s a work that was recommended to me by a friend, available for free online here, and is one that will probably stick with me for a long while after reading it. Thirty young adult short stories featuring lesbian heroines.For today’s informal post, I’d like to discuss Sarah Diemer’s short novel, The Dark Wife.

(The cover for The Dark Wife was designed and illustrated by the incomparable artist, Laura Diemer~ <3)Ī dark fantasy YA with a lesbian heroine. Have a Goodreads account? You can add The Dark Wife here! The Dark Wife is a labor of love, created to be enjoyed by those it was meant to find. It is offered as a free download in the hopes that everyone who needs to read it will be able to do so. – on Smashwords (for eReaders/reading online)Īlso available for free download to share and read online, and as a free audio book and free French translation. It won the 2012 Golden Crown Literary Award for Speculative Fiction. The Dark Wife is a YA novel, a lesbian revisionist retelling of the Persephone and Hades myth. She offers Persephone sanctuary in her land of the dead, so the young goddess may escape her Olympian destiny.īut Persephone finds more than freedom in the underworld. In truth, Hades is the goddess of the underworld, and no friend of Zeus. Zeus calls Hades “lord” of the dead as a joke. But when Persephone meets the enigmatic Hades, she experiences something new: choice.

She lives on the green earth with her mother, Demeter, growing up beneath the ever-watchful eyes of the gods and goddesses on Mount Olympus. Persephone has everything a daughter of Zeus could want–except for freedom. Three thousand years ago, a god told a lie.

The dark wife by sarah diemer