I read CAIT CORRAIN'S book | Crown of Starlight REVIEW

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She should've just blamed Withcindy she might still have a book deal...if you get, you get it😂😂😂

Asking Dionysus, DIONYSUS THE GOD OF LUST, WINE, AND PARTIES, not to have sex is b e y o n d me

The fact that the book would have launched well based on that gorgeous cover alone is making me fucking insane.

Now I understand why she was so insecure about her writing 💀

Goodreads when an author is getting review bombed by racists: I sleep Goodreads when a racist author is getting review bombed: Real shit??

I hate when Hera is portrayed as a 2D villain because she’s incredibly complex. She’s definitely not a good person/goddess but she’s permanently married to an cheating, egotistical POS while having maintain the role of being THE pure wife and image of motherhood. Zeus is the real villain, not her

she literally said: i'm gonna mix christianity, some names and things i read on wikipedia about greek gods and some starwars and called it a greek myth retelling... the audacity.

"Fanfiction of a show I've never watched" sounds like the best way to describe this for real!!

It's funny that you mentioned that Theseus would be the hero if this was another story because Theseus IS the hero in the original Greek myth lmao

Well damn! Let me dig up one of my old Yu-Gi-Oh fanfics and swap out the names with Egyptian gods. Get myself a book deal.

Murdering your family was a pretty big no-no in ancient greece. Also, the moirai were personifications of fate, and majority of their portrayals show them as the only beings to hold power over the gods. But you know sure, boil them down to goddesses of chastity.

That fake conversation they wrote to blame everything on that friend that didn’t exist told me everything I need to know about whether or not I would enjoy this book 😵‍💫

HI! Greek mythology nerd here. This book's twist of mythology is weird. I don't mind a retelling of Ariadne and Dionysus, frankly I'm tired of Hades and Persephone adaptations, but 1) Ariadne's personality flip flops from girlboss to poor sheltered church girl constantly. And 2) The mythology is NOT EXPLAINED AT ALL. Like you said, newcomers to greek mythology will have absolutely no idea what's going on. Hell, even I got lost just hearing your synopsis. But, I will try and explain because it's one of my special interests and I want to convert people to my brainrot every chance I get, lol. Ariadne trying to deal with purity culture would've been SO GOOD. Hera's wrath is basically a scare tactic to punish women for being too attractive and tempting for men (I.E: Zeus). I don't know why they made the Crete's worship the Moirai (the fates) instead of Hera, because Hera is the actual goddess of purity and marriage. Ariadne dealing with her own bodily autonomy after being told that she both has to be beautiful but not too beautiful would've been spectacular. But Cait clearly only understands the surface level of purity culture (I grew up with the ACE school system throughout the majority of my school career, so I know a thing or two.) Dionysus does indeed marry Ariadne because he feels bad for Theseus abandoning her after his whole adventure with the Minotaur. However, he most DEFINITELY would not listen to some mortal about not having revelry. Because, you know...he's the GOD OF REVELRY. They could've had conversations about different types of relationships, like how they attend parties but they still love each other. In fact, it would've been cool to have Ariadne go from worshiping Hera to marrying Dionysus, one of the gods she hates the most. (There are a lot of gods she hates.) The fake dating trope does not work here because Hera is the GODDESS OF MARRIAGE AND SHE COULD TELL IF THEY WERE ACTUALLY MARRIED OR NOT. It always baffles me that authors with really great premises fumble the bag SO HARD. And to bring down so many BIPOC authors in the process. White women audacity at it's finest. And you are correct, Artemis is mommy.

“I’m being gaslit by my entire world” is peak Cait Corrain. When you read her negative reviews of other books, it’s obvious that she had extreme main character syndrome and viewed the rest of the publishing world as a conspiracy against her. She frequently brought up how “everyone” who liked certain books were wrong or “on drugs” and needed to rethink their preferences.

2 things I thought while watching this: 1) Cait's idea of research seems to be literally reading Lore Olympus just one time. 2) It makes me SO MAD that an agent and publishing house likely turned down a whole bunch of amazingly well written books, by people who were likely incredibly dedicated, just to publish what I now know is objectively trash. Written like middle grade with adult themes (and actually I've read middle grade books that are better than this), with a protagonist no one but a 13 year old girl could relate to (which wouldn't be bad if it was a YA, but obviously because of the themes, it's not). Apparently the publishing industry is not a standard of excellence, it's just a marker of trends. EDIT: HERA, (among other things) the Goddess of marriage, doesn't know??? HERA doesn't know about a fake marriage to get into Olympus? Am I missing something?

That note about "if this were another book, we'd be rooting for Theseus" is actually kind of interesting if you do know Greek mythology. Because in Greek mythology Theseus is one of the great heros and you're meant to root for him. It's wild that she couldn't unpack his story in a way that made you sympathize with the minotaur though because you could throw a rock on tumblr and hit a post recontextualizing how terrible the minotaur's story really is. It would have been ridiculously easy to reframe Ariadne in a way that was sympathetic to her and her half brother and stressed how much of a frat bro ahole Theseus was.

Bit of an ancient world and mythology buff (Egyptian, Greek, Nordic, etc). The original definition of cult just meant a system of veneration of a particular god or object. There were tons of cults in ancient Egypt and Greece and no real cohesive single religion. You get cults a lot when you have a pantheon or numerous religious figures (there used to be cults of some of the saints, for example, I believe). The cult of Athena would just be worshippers of Athena, for example. Cult came to mean the more sinister or strange religious practices with a charismatic leader (cult of personality) only about the 18th and 19th centuries (if I remember right).

The Minotaur’s dad was not “somebody”. I so hate to tell you this, but he is half man and half bull in the purest way, gurl👀 His mama is Pasiphäe (like Ariadne and her 7 human siblings) and the Cretan Bull, who is a literal beautiful bull who was gifted to king Minos by Poseidon (in most telling, for Minos to sacrifice). She got down with the Bull.

The father can't kill Ariadne because Family murder is the worst of all crimes in Greek Mythology. Wouldn't have been hard for one character to mention that at some point.