The women of Thebes are vanishing one by one, hit by a strange new disease called ‘Maenadism’. They say that the afflicted women, the Maenads, are turning into huge, savage beasts, with an insatiable appetite for human blood and sexual intercourse, living on mount Kithairon in she-wolf packs. Rumor has it that a new God has emerged, the effeminate trickster Dionysus, with plans for world-domination, and no one is safe. Least of all his cousin, king Pentheus, the throne’s usurper, who needs to gather an army to face him as well as his female cohorts, in a desperate attempt to protect the city.
In this world, no woman can be safe from disease, and no man can be safe from the rage of the Maenads. When Ioli, a former slave girl married to a handsome soldier, discovers the first symptoms of disease in her body, she starts to fear for the monster lurking within. Sooner or later, she will have to abandon the city, on a quest to explore the secrets of mount Kithairon. Her story will change the fate of the ancient world forever.
Reminding The bastard child or The Blood Chamber of Angela Carter and Jeff Vandermeer’s Annihilation, this is a body-horror fantasy novel of classical proportions. Written in English, this novel is a hybrid, a blend of different genres of modern fiction, a feminist re-imagining of The Bacchae, where patriarchy is being sadistically devoured by packs of mutant she-wolves. Deliciously bloody, gothic and kitsch!
Kastaniotis, 2021, 464 p.
