I could not fear the destruction of all that was good because everything had been ruined before I could remember and I had grown up in the tattered, stained remnants of my sister's golden days. Unlike Ariadne, Phaedra doesn't remember a time before the Minotaur: 'I had always known that monsters existed.How much agency do you think Ariadne and Phaedra have over their choices, and how much are they manipulated by the gods and Fates? Do they bear any responsibility for what happens to them? The tension between fate and free will runs throughout this novel.Do you think there is still a tendency in our culture to valorize men while ignoring women's pain? As she grows up, Ariadne realizes that there is a darker side to the stories of gods and men she so often heard:'No longer was my world one of brave heroes I was learning all too swiftly the women's pain that throbbed unspoken through the tales of their feats.' Discuss some examples from the novel that bear this out.Why do you think the author chose to begin there? How do we, over the course of the novel, see how problematic these 'righteous men' are? In the opening pages, Ariadne tells 'the story of a righteous man,' her father, King Minos of Crete.Be sure, then, that you also include me.'What tone does this set for the story to come? The novel's epigraph is taken from Ovid's Heroides, in which Ariadne addresses Theseus: 'You will stand before the crowds reciting the glorious death of the man-bull in those great winding passages cut from the rock.

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