Circe is a dream of a book. It’s the perfect example of the Greek myth retold genre that’s been exploding in the last few years – what with The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker and The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood among others – but the reason I loved Circe goes deeper.

If I had known how beautiful the descriptions of nature would be, I’d have read Circe (and Madeline Miller’s other novel, The Song of Achilles) much sooner.

After unleashing magic that she never believed she could be capable of, Circe, the daughter of Helios, is banished to the island of Aiaia.

Rather than acting as her prison, Aiaia provides her sanctuary. Her days become focused on honing the art of pharmaka – the magic of herbs – as she forages, picks, blends, brews, and experiments with what she finds.

With the unlimited time available to her as an immortal, her spells and tinctures grow more refined and potent. She transforms men into swine, creates powerful protective chants, and treats her ailments and those of others. Her island makes for the perfect retreat for us as reader, too.

Here are some of the best books to read next if you liked Circe, featuring their own unique blend of magic, nature, myth, and strong women.

Books to read if you loved Circe and The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

1. Galatea by Madeline Miller

If you haven’t yet, I’d wholeheartedly recommend reading Madeline Miller’s short story Galatea, which has recently been published as a beautiful (and tiny) hardcover for the first time.

Like Circe, Galatea is a story focused on transformation, or as Miller explains in the afterword, on “finding freedom for yourself in a word that denies it to you.”

Here, Madeline Miller reimagines the myth of Galatea (“she who is milk-white”); the most beautiful woman her town has ever seen, carved from stone by Pygmalion, a skilled marble sculptor, and blessed with the gift of life by a goddess. Here’s my review of Galatea.

2. Uprooted by Naomi Novik

If you loved the nature and magic of Circe, Uprooted is a fantastic choice to read next. We meet Agnieszka, who loves her quiet home, her village, and the nearby forests and glimmering river.

But it’s a fantasy novel after all, and the corrupted Wood stands on the border, full of malevolent power casting a shadow over her life.

To keep safe, Agnieszka and her people have to make a sacrifice to the evil wizard, the Dragon, every ten years. That sacrifice is a young woman handed over to serve him for ten years, and the next choosing is fast approaching.

3. A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes

Published in 2021, A Thousand Ships is one of the most popular books to read if you loved Circe. This gripping novel by Natalie Haynes puts women, girls, and goddesses at the centre of one of the greatest tales ever told: the fall of Troy.

Madeline Miller shared, “With her trademark passion, wit, and fierce feminism, Natalie Haynes gives much-needed voice to the silenced women of the Trojan War.”

4. The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

If there’s a Nordic equivalent to Circe, it’s The Mercies. Set in the winter of 1617, the sea around the remote Norwegian island of Vardø is thrown into a vicious storm.

A young woman, Maren Magnusdatter, watches as the men of the island, out fishing, perish in an instant.

The island is now a place of strong women, and The Mercies is a tale of what follows in the beautiful, brutal environment.

5. The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert

Less about myth but very much about the beauty of nature, The Signature of All Things is a stunning book about one woman’s life, love, and self-discovery as a botanist.

The novel follows Alma Whittaker, the daughter of a poor-born Englishman who makes a great fortune in the South American quinine trade. Alma inherits his money and his mind, and as she becomes a botanist of considerable gifts, her story soars across the globe.

For another book by Elizabeth Gilbert with plenty of self-sufficiency, foraging, and living off the land, read The Last American Man.

It’s non-fiction that reads as myth, offering an intriguing portrayal of a man who left his family’s comfortable suburban home to live close to nature in the Appalachian Mountains.

6. The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker

In The Silence of the Girls, one of the most immersive books like Circe, the ancient city of Troy has been under siege by the powerful Greek army for a decade, waging bloody war over a stolen woman: Helen.

In the Greek camp, another woman – Briseis, former queen of one of Troy’s neighbouring kingdoms, now Achilles’ concubine – watches and waits for the war’s outcome.

This wonderfully nuanced portrait of previously hidden figures is magnificent, brought to life by Pat Barker’s decades-long study of war and its impact on individual lives.

Now in 2022, Pat Baker has just published her newest retelling of one of the greatest myths, The Women of Troy.

7. The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

A magical book to read after Circe is The Snow Child. It’s Alaska in 1920 – ruthless for most people, but especially for new arrivals Jack and Mabel.

Childless and drifting apart, the season’s first snowfall brings them together for a moment to build a child out of snow. The next morning, the snow child is gone – but they glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees.

The girl seems to be a child of the woods, who hunts with a red fox at her side and somehow survives alone in the wilderness. Jack and Mabel come to love her as their own daughter, but in this beautiful, brutal place nothing is quite as it seems.

8. Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin

“I am not the feminine voice you may have expected.” Lavinia is a book entirely written from the perspective of a character that never utters a word: Lavinia in Virgil’s epic, The Aeneid. 

Delicately crafted by the queen of fantasy sci-fi, this is a richly imagined and beautiful novel of passion and war, reimagining a silenced voice just like Madeline Miller achieved with Circe.

9. Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens

Where the Crawdads Sing has been recommended everywhere in the last few years, but if you haven’t read it, it’s got similar strong-woman-in-nature vibes to Circe.

We meet Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl, who’s survived for years alone in the marshland that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and building an encyclopaedic knowledge of the natural world. But when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the local North Carolina coastal community immediately suspects her and her quiet life in the wild is shattered.

If you enjoyed this, here are more books like Where the Crawdads Sing to read next.

10. Pandora’s Jar: Women in the Greek Myths by Natalie Haynes

Do you wish you knew more about Greek mythology? If so, Pandora’s Jar is a great choice to read next.

Here, Natalie Haynes, broadcaster, passionate classicist, and bestselling author for fans of Madeline Miller, retells the great mythic sagas with women at their centre.

Putting the female characters on equal footing with their menfolk, the result is a vivid and powerful account of the deeds – and misdeeds – of goddesses Hera, Aphrodite, Athene, and Circe.

It’s not just the goddesses that Natalie Haynes reimagines: away from Mount Olympus, it’s Helen, Clytemnestra, Jocasta, Antigone, and Medea who sing from these pages, not Paris, Agamemnon, Orestes, or Jason.

11. The Wolf Den by Elodie Harper

The first book in the Wolf Den trilogy (Book 3 is scheduled to be published in 2023), The Wolf Den is the gripping tale of Amara, the beloved daughter of a doctor in Greece until her father’s sudden death plunged her mother into destitution.

Now, Amara is a slave and prostitute in Pompeii’s notorious Wolf Den brothel. But intelligent and resourceful, and buoyed by the sisterhood she forges with the brothel’s other women, Amara’s spirit isn’t broken.

Amara finds solace in the laughter and hopes they all share… and realises that the city is alive with opportunity, even for the lowest-born slave. But everything in Pompeii has a price. How much will Amara’s freedom cost her?

12. The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden

If you imagine a Russian spin on Spirited Away, The Bear and the Nightingale would come close. At the edge of the wilderness in this fairytale-like book, winter lasts most of the year and the snowdrifts grow taller than houses.

Vasilisa doesn’t mind the cold – she spends the Russian winter nights huddled around the embers of a fire with her siblings, listening to her nurse’s fairy tales.

The family honours the spirits in these stories, knowing them to protect their homes from evil, but when Vasilisa’s mother dies, her father brings home a new wife who forbids this.

More hinges upon their rituals than anyone knows, and as danger circles, Vasilisa must call on dangerous gifts she has long concealed to protect her family.

For even more books like Circe, retreat into these books about wild nature. You can also read more about Madeline Miller’s novel-in-progress, Persephone, and the upcoming HBO adaptation of Circe.

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Book Review | Synopsis | Similar Books | Excerpt | Buy It

A Psalm for the Wild-Built

A Psalm for the Wild-Built is a true balm for the soul, as comforting and wholesome as any of the personalized tea blends imagined and served with love by Dex, the story’s main character.

URL: https://amzn.to/3giY0En

Author: Becky Chambers

Editor's Rating:
4.5

Is A Psalm for the Wild-Built worth a read?

There’s something so therapeutic about Becky Chambers’ writing. As well as anyone who wants a break, A Psalm for the Wild-Built is the perfect book for anyone feeling lost, directionless, or in need of a big change in life. It’s also full of slice-of-life vibes, if you love that in your reading material.

Synopsis of A Psalm for the Wild-Built

“If we want change, or good fortune, or solace, we have to create it for ourselves.”

A Psalm for the Wild-Built

In A Psalm for the Wild-Built, we enter a utopian future years after the end of the Factory Age, when robots put down their tools and gave up their roles as human servants to disappear into the untouched wilderness. That’s where they’ve remained, far from human life.

In Panga’s main city, we meet Sibling Dex: a non-binary twenty-nine-year-old gardener who has no idea what they want to do with their life. But they do know one thing for sure, that despite the beauty and livability of a metropolis, “sometimes, a person reaches a point in their life when it becomes absolutely essential to get the fuck out of the city”.

And so Sibling Dex leaves their job to become a tea monk, skipping the usual apprenticeship route and opting to learn everything themselves. After a rocky start, Sibling Dex is adored by their customers. Dex listens to their problems, and then serves the perfect cup of tea.

Despite becoming perhaps the best tea monk in Panga, Sibling Dex still feels that this isn’t it. There’s something missing in life. They yearn for wildness and the sound of crickets. And so they cycle their wagon further into the wilderness than definitely advised and take in the freedom and beauty of their new surroundings.

That is, until they’re interrupted by a robot, Mosscap, who has left the wilderness to ask one simple question. What do humans want?It turns out that this is actually an incredibly difficult question, and Dex feels like they absolutely cannot answer it.

What follows is a heartwarming and soul-searching journey of adventure deep into the wild to reach an abandoned hermitage. It’s here that Dex and Mosscap find a deeper bond than they could have imagined, learning more about each other, themselves, and what really leads to a meaningful life than ever would have been possible alone.

An in-depth summary of A Psalm for the Wild-Built (spoilers!)

Books like A Psalm for the Wild-Built

Although there’s sure to be a flurry of Becky Chambers-inspired writers in the next few years, no one really writes quite like she does.

For more books like A Psalm for the Wild-Built, you can’t go wrong with other books by Becky Chambers. The sequel, A Prayer for the Crown Shy, was published in 2022 and is perfect to read next.

You can also escape into Becky Chamber’s Wayfarers series, beginning with The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet.

Book excerpt

Read the first pages of A Psalm for the Wild-Built, or see the book on Amazon.

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Like many of us, I fell out of the habit of reading fantasy books as I grew older. I’ve only started changing that in recent years with books like The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon and revisiting J.R.R. Tolkien.

Why is it that we stop seeking magical worlds when we become adults?

Maybe it’s because of responsibility, or needing to be in the real world, or being too mature and wise for such things.

But oh, it’s such a joy to rediscover fantasy books like His Dark Materials. When we’re experiencing anxiety, low mood or depression, or going through tough times, escaping this world for another – Jordan College, Hogwarts, Narnia, or the Shire – can be a welcome retreat.

When someone asks me about the books I’d recommend for the most difficult days, I often want to shout, read the children’s and young adults’ books you love!

However, you can hardly class His Dark Materials as a trilogy just for children, or even young adults. The BBC & HBO adaptation is very much marketed to adults, especially those who read the books when they first came out. And the themes aren’t exactly easy-going.

Philip Pullman has some big messages at work in His Dark Materials. The church, the government, personal freedom and justice… all come into question as the plot develops.

After watching the 2019 adaptation, which I loved – Dafne Keen, Ruth Wilson, and most others are spectacular – I remembered just how beautifully crafted Philip Pullman’s world is. And I wanted to spend as much time there as possible.

As soon as the first episode aired, I fell in love with Jordan College, Lyra Belacqua, and the world she lives in once again. And oh, how I’d love to have my own dæmon (the BBC website has a quiz where you can find out what your dæmon would be.)

Before season 2 of the HBO/BBC adaptation of His Dark Materials airs (probably this year, they filmed most of the two seasons in unison, so hopefully we won’t have too much of a wait), I’ve decided to reread the books. Iain will join me, he read the series several times when he was younger but couldn’t say no for another round.

The book starts with a quote from John Milton’s Paradise Lost, from which the series gets its name:

“Unless the Almighty Maker them ordain/ His dark materials to create more worlds,–/ Into this wild Abyss the wary Fiend/ Stood on the brink of Hell and looked a while,/ Pondering his voyage; for no narrow frith/ He had to cross.”

We then tumble into the halls and secret rooms of Jordan College with Lyra and her dæmon, Panteleimon, where we join them for disquieting plots, intrigue, and overheard secrets that start the adventure to come.

It couldn’t be a better time for me to read His Dark Materials – my workload has stepped up with some big clients who want a lot of my time. It’s a good problem to have, I won’t complain too much, but it has left me slightly frazzled.

If anything can soothe my soul and help me to breathe deeper, it’s a good book. So bring it on, Philip Pullman.

Top image from HBO

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Samantha Shannon spins a world of magic and otherworldly power page after 800 pages of The Priory of The Orange Tree, a marvellously-crafted fantasy novel published earlier this year.

I read the book in unusual yet perfect circumstances: on-board the Trans-Mongolian Express train from Moscow to Beijing, spanning nearly 8000 kilometres across 7 time zones.

I’m writing this from Lake Baikal, where I’m taking a break for a few days before heading across the Russian border to Mongolia. We will spend six days in total on the train, with rejuvenating stops like this one to rest in a proper bed and eat food that isn’t instant noodles. A journey like this calls for a long book – and The Priory of The Orange Tree was a spectacular choice.

The author, Samantha Shannon, is a twenty-seven-year-old born and raised in West London. She started writing when she was twelve, finished her first novel when she was fifteen, and studied English Language and Literature at St Anne’s College, Oxford. Shannon is also known for The Bone Season, the internationally best-selling first installment in a seven-book series of fantasy novels, of which three are published.

“A world divided.
A queendom without an heir.
An ancient enemy awakens.

The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years. Still unwed, Queen Sabran the Ninth must conceive a daughter to protect her realm from destruction–but assassins are getting closer to her door.

Ead Duryan is an outsider at court. Though she has risen to the position of lady-in-waiting, she is loyal to a hidden society of mages. Ead keeps a watchful eye on Sabran, secretly protecting her with forbidden magic.

Across the dark sea, Tané has trained all her life to be a dragonrider, but is forced to make a choice that could see her life unravel.

Meanwhile, the divided East and West refuse to parley, and forces of chaos are rising from their sleep.“

As I read The Priory of The Orange Tree, I thought about how I should read fantasy novels far more often.

As we dive into the book’s cleverly-mapped world, we meet women wielding power, swords, secrets, pirate ships, and dragons. If The Priory of The Orange Tree can be compared to George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, it’s as its feminist and subversive counterpart.

Tané, a young woman who has always dreamed of becoming a dragon rider, hauls herself up mountains, into the depths of freezing oceans, and across continents in the name of her quests. She’s just one of an impressive consort of queens, heiresses, and mages who bear the book’s magic and bewitch its reader.

“Of all the apprentices from the South House, Tané alone had made it to the summit. Half-frozen, beset with mountain sickness, she had crawled up the last slope, retching blood on to the snow. She had not been human in that final hour. Just a paper lantern, thin and wind-torn, clinging to the flickering remnants of a soul. Yet when there was no more to climb, and she had looked up and seen nothing but the terrible beauty of the sky, she had found the strength to rise.”

With The Priory of The Orange Tree, Samantha Shannon shows fantasy’s ability to enrich our impressions of the real world, leading our eyes to its natural beauty, our enriching relationships, and the courageous spirits we inhabit our planet with.

Fantasy can embolden our hearts to slay our demons, explore more than we thought possible, and craft our strongest selves. It draws on some of the oldest parts of humanity: stories, imagination, and our inherited role as myth-makers and listeners.

Pick up The Priory of The Orange Tree for a reminder of your strength, capacity to love and forgive, and ability to achieve remarkable things. Remember why you love fiction and think of the many other fictional worlds to be explored.

Dive headfirst into it and see how you come out on the other side.

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