LuisVilla reviewed Metamorphica by Zachary Mason
Review of 'Metamorphica' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
This was not quite as good for me as The Lost Books of the Odyssey, but still showcases Mason’s ability to be emotionally devastating on love, death, and obsession in small bites. Some of the stories will leave you staggered, which is much of what you can hope for from something like this.
Relative to Lost Books, two big things stuck out. The first was simply my fault - I’m not as familiar with Ovid (though I am with the Greek myths more generally) so for me the book didn’t benefit as much as Lost Books from comparison to/reflection on the source matter. (It was good enough that now I do want to find a good version of Ovid, so that’s something!)
The other thing is that, in retrospect, part of what I loved about Lost Books was the creative variation on recurring stories, which allowed for some of the …
This was not quite as good for me as The Lost Books of the Odyssey, but still showcases Mason’s ability to be emotionally devastating on love, death, and obsession in small bites. Some of the stories will leave you staggered, which is much of what you can hope for from something like this.
Relative to Lost Books, two big things stuck out. The first was simply my fault - I’m not as familiar with Ovid (though I am with the Greek myths more generally) so for me the book didn’t benefit as much as Lost Books from comparison to/reflection on the source matter. (It was good enough that now I do want to find a good version of Ovid, so that’s something!)
The other thing is that, in retrospect, part of what I loved about Lost Books was the creative variation on recurring stories, which allowed for some of the grimness of the overall themes to be leavened with joy at Mason’s creativity - he did what with Cyclops this time? Because in this one, each short story is interrelated but not repeating, there’s not quite the same opportunity for pleasant discovery/variation, at least in the same way.