The Palace of Eros

A Novel

De: Caro De Robertis

Narrado por: Caro De Robertis

Featured in “65 Queer Books You Need to Read in Summer 2024” by Electric Literature

Perfect for fans of Circe and Black Sun, this bold and subversive feminist retelling of the Greek myth of Psyche and Eros explores the power of queer joy and freedom.

Young, headstrong Psyche has captured the eyes of every suitor in town and far beyond with her tempestuous beauty, which has made her irresistible as a woman yet undesirable as a wife. Secretly, she longs for a life away from the expectations and demands of men. When her father realizes that the future of his family and town will be forever cursed unless he appeases an enraged Aphrodite, he follows the orders of the Oracle, tying Psyche to a rock to be ravaged by a monstrous husband. And yet a monster never arrives.

When Eros, nonbinary deity of desire, sees Psyche, she cannot fulfill her promise to her mother Aphrodite to destroy the mortal young woman. Instead, Eros devises a plan to sweep Psyche away to an idyllic palace, hidden from the prying eyes of Aphrodite, Zeus, and the outside world. There, against the dire dictates of Olympus, Eros and Psyche fall in love. Each night, Eros visits Psyche under the cover of impenetrable darkness, where they both experience untold passion and love. But each morning, Eros flies away before light comes to break the spell of the palace that keeps them safe.

Before long, Psyche’s nights spent in pleasure turn to days filled with doubts, as she grapples with the cost of secrecy and the complexities of freedom and desire. Restless and spurred by her sisters to reveal Eros’s true nature, she breaks her trust and forces a reckoning that tests them both—and transforms the very heavens.

Told in bold and sparkling prose from “a brilliant and luminous writer” (Madeline Miller, New York Times bestselling author), The Palace of Eros transports us to a magical world imbued by divine forces as well as everyday realities, where palaces glitter with magic even as ordinary people fight for freedom in a society that fears the unknown.

©2024 Caro De Robertis (P)2024 Simon & Schuster Audio

Beautiful!

Hypnotic read, empowering story, based on mythology, but with a lovely modern twist and inspiring message to live in your own truth.

Psyche Lit The Lantern

July last year I was approved of a eARC of 'The Palace of Eros' and thank the publisher and author for a review copy in exchange for a honest review.

Yet it's been a year and shouldn't be surprising that I got a Audible version and have been very pleased with Caro De Robertis' narration, it was a rare delight putting me in mind of a strange mixture of Our Wives Under the Sea and Ladyhawke (movie in 1985) inspired "Shadowdancer and Sunsinger" (first mentioned in 1987's Arrow Flight) from Mercedes Lackey - because Eros comes to Psyche only by night in their palace and by day Psyche is alone and grows lonely and longs for more freedoms than she's ever known before.

I loved that this was set in some unknown but still ancient time after the Trojan war, I don't believe any place was named, saved Delphi where Psyche's father traveled to get a oracle. Psyche is caught in a web of what other people want from her, her father Lelex wants a obedient daughter, her sisters Iantha and Coronia a easily awed playmate, her (nameless?) mother sees her perhaps truest of all.

For she calls Psyche, her light, wary that her newly born daughter might fly into the sky like the legends of winged Vanth taking her mother's people to the underworld on wings.

It is what men want of the beautiful Psyche, a object like Pygmalion's ivory 'Aphrodite', that most ties her to a fate that leads to people sayings she's cursed by Aphrodite for being worshiped as a goddess (when those people stopped leaving offerings?) when there is famine and the harvest is bad. Her sisters are married off and her father determines that he will go to the oracle to determine his daughters fate.

As the oracle's vision is interpreted by a priest who says that Psyche too must marry.

"Her marriage will be monstrous. Some marriages are an intrusion on nature. A crime. Monsters move among us, as we all know."

When pressed further, "A slither, A horror, a wrong."

So Psyche goes to the cliffs with a bridal party that becomes a funeral when she's left alone and tied to the rocks left for a monster like a sacrifice, like Agamemnon's daughter Iphigenia, like Polyxena, or Andromeda or Hesione...

But her marriage is a rescue although there are rules, one that she must never see her husband wife in the light or two- to know who she is (she calls Eros 'Pteron 'wing').

This Eros is daughter of Aphrodite, who was pregnant with her while emerging from sea foam, but Eros is also primeval and both woman and man in a nature that Zeus is threatened by. (Which I find odd given that certain statues of Zeus Labrandeus/Labraundos of Labraunda where he is depicted with a labrys ax and breasts, as well as giving birth twice to Athena by head, and Dionysus by his thigh.)

I don't know if Robertis knew of Phanes (swallowed by Zeus, as Zeus would later swallow Metis), or Agdistis who becomes Kybele, but I believe she knows of Tiresias because it's perhaps hinted in a punishment Zeus gives that he gets to watch Eros as a man take women nine times (which is a odd coincidence if Tierasias was not in mind, also the only named woman with who Eros does this is Agamemnon's wife Clytemnestra and I enjoyed the implied threat to both Agamemnon and Zeus by it).

I was a bit disappointed that there was no interaction with Eros and Hermaphroditos/Atlantiades, another child of Aphrodite (in fact no other children of Aphrodite exist at all!) and no hint of Aphrodite's own male gender as Aphroditos. Indeed there were no other Erotes named or mentioned at all. I had wondered with Etruscan Vanth being named early Eros would be more identified with Lasa or Evan of Turan's company, or Leinth... but Vanth proved to be something else entirely.

In fact the only other gods which Eros and Psyche interact with are of course Aphrodite, her Graces (Algaea, Thalia and Euphrosyne) - Hera, Zeus, Hephaestus (his marriage to Aphrodite being positive and a example of a good masculine force put me in mind of a trans Hephaestus in the podcast 'Forged Bonds'), Apollo (where the myth of Daphne and revenge and Eros' shame come into play), Demeter and Persephone. There's no Dionysus or Pan and I was sorry for that for it made it feel as if Psyche and Eros were alone in being queer and finding joy in it. (I sort of wish we got a follow up to the rich young man and the merchant who got the arrow meant for Psyche. Or with Melia...)

There a few other myths that could have been used; VIII. The Discourse of Aristophanes: 189 C-193 D, The Symposium by Plato which has been popularly quoted and might have been specifically relevant given Psyche as "soul" and queerness and Eros as her other half. Although I find Aesop Fables 517 interesting, it's not had a translation I've really found likeable.

But by large I enjoyed The Palace of Eros thoroughly and understood why the tighter focus was needed and while I do wish Iantha and Coronia had gotten more of an arc, maybe helped in Psyche's tasks, seen her struggle at them while pregnant, or realized they had been wrong or perhaps guided too much by their father (although the use of the ring of Gyges that makes it's wearer invisible which gets told as a story and plants doubt was interesting) and reunited with her (maybe gotten new marriages too) it was just the book I needed to help me fall back in love with myth retellings, full of surprising and delightful joys.

(I did want to see the baby -and have a reunion with Psyche's mother on Olympus too, but maybe there's a short story out there...?)