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Today’s Women in SF&F Month guest is M. H. Ayinde! Her science fiction, fantasy, and horror short stories include “The Techwork Horse” (featured on the Locus Recommended Reading List), “Blind Eye” (selected for the BSFA Award longlist), “The Walls of Benin City” (selected for the BSFA Award longlist and The Best of World SF: Volume 3), and “Worst Place Ever – Avoid!” (winner of the March 2021 Apex Magazine Microfiction Contest). A Song of Legends Lost, her debut novel and the first book in an epic fantasy trilogy, is described as “an unforgettable tale of revenge and rebellion [that] unfolds when a reckless king implements an ill-fated plan to end a thousand-year war.” It will be released in the UK next week—on April 8!—and will be out in the US, Canada, and Nigeria on June 3. I’m delighted she’s here today to share about a trope she finds particularly fascinating in “The Allure of Lost Civilisations in SFF.”

Cover of A Song of Legends Lost by M. H. Ayinde

Cover Designer: Ben Prior
Cover Artist: Richard Anderson

About A Song of Legends Lost (Invoker #1):

A SONG OF REBELLION. A SONG OF WAR. A SONG OF LEGENDS LOST.

In the Nine Lands, only those of noble blood can summon the spirits of their ancestors to fight in battle. But when Temi, a commoner from the slums, accidentally invokes a powerful spirit, she finds it could hold the key to ending a centuries-long war.

But not everything that can be invoked is an ancestor. And some of the spirits that can be drawn from the ancestral realm are more dangerous than anyone can imagine.

The Allure of Lost Civilisations in SFF

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by the lost civilisations trope. If a piece of media includes an abandoned ruin or an extinct species, I will devour it. If said species or civilisation was super advanced, possibly even more advanced than our own, then I will devour it with a capital D.

Image of Data from the Star Trek: The Next Generation Episode "Contagion"
Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 2 Episode 11 “Contagion”

I think my twin introductions to this trope in SFF came via the Mysterious Cities of Gold cartoons, one of my favourites as a kid (more on that below), and an early episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, “Contagion.” In the latter, we are introduced to the Iconians, an advanced species with portal technology, who were wiped out hundreds of millennia ago. TNG was and is my favourite TV show ever, and “Contagion” was the first time when I can remember feeling a sense of deep history from a futuristic setting. Never before had I encountered science fiction that posited the idea of space-faring civilisations that had become extinct, and after that, I was hooked. It provided another layer to that delicious sense of being out of place and time that I craved from all SFF. I went on to spend many years seeking this vibe out in everything I read, from Greg Bear’s Eon (which blew my mind as a 14-year-old) to every epic fantasy book with a ten-thousand-year history.

Image from Grandia
Grandia

For me, the allure of stories is in their central mystery (which is probably why murder mysteries and police procedurals are one of the few genres of fiction I enjoy outside of SFF and horror). A lost civilisation asks a lot of the same questions as a murder mystery — who destroyed this thing, and why, and what was the victim like, and how did they die? Often in SFF, the answer to how they died is internal collapse or war with outsiders. I think part of this is because people often look to historical analogues like Ancient Rome for inspiration when conceiving of civilisations that rose to great heights before plummeting. Oftentimes, these fictional civilisations fall due to growing too powerful, like the Angelou civilisation in the 1999 JRPG Grandia (one of my favourite games of all time). In that game, the Icarians (who maybe flew too close to the figurative sun, geddit?!) wielded great power, which they shared with humans who then became greedy. This idea is echoed in possibly my favourite movie of all time, Studio Ghibli’s Castle in the Sky, where it is implied the Laputans abandoned their technological advancements because they saw how destructive they could be. In this way, these lost civilisations manage to be both utopias and dystopias… because so often they ascended to greater heights than our own, and yet ultimately they experience apocalypse. And we live in the aftermath (which offers an interesting spin on the idea of post-apocalyptic fiction, eh?!).

Image from Castle in the Sky
Castle in the Sky

I also love it when our own reality is the lost civilisation. Another foundational series for me was Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun, set so far into our future that the Earth’s sun is dying and multiple human epochs have come and gone. There is such a mystique to this series, enhanced by a delightfully unreliable narrator and beautiful prose, and I loved how familiar concepts (such as robots) are approached and described in such unfamiliar ways. There is such a weighty sense throughout this series that humanity once ascended to great power and knowledge, but that so much of it has now been forgotten (and awaits rediscovery). This is also hinted at throughout The Wheel of Time series. Whatever you may think of Season 1 of the TV adaptation, the entire thing was worth it for me for that brief shot it gave us of the Age of Legends, when we see a city of skyscrapers and spaceships that match overgrown ruins we glimpsed earlier on in that season.

Image from The Wheel of Time
The Wheel of Time

This links with another aspect of the appeal of this trope: the idea of there being this earlier age where everything was just better. In everyday life, I find this idea pretty problematic — it’s the lie spouted by certain political entities right now, and I hear it used in online spaces as a cover for racist thinking. Too often when people say this area has gone downhill, what they really mean is, I have too many Black and brown neighbours. But I do think the idea of a past age of wonder appeals to a deeper part of our human nature, and that is the part of us that looks back fondly on certain childhood memories. The pleasure we get from nostalgia is part of what makes us human. (Nostalgia is a character in Inside Out 2, therefore it definitely is an integral part of our psychology, because the Inside Out movies are my benchmark for all matters pertaining to psychology and I will not be taking questions at this time.) I’ve always felt that the lost civilisations trope taps into that thinking on a subconscious level… because most of us can relate to the pleasure of looking back on happy memories.

As a fantasy writer, one of the easiest ways I’ve found to give worldbuilding depth is to demonstrate that other civilisations have come and gone, both because of the layered sense of history it provides, and because of the instant questions it begs. So even when I was writing as a kid, there was always a lost civilisation or three and they were always super advanced. As an adult coming back to Mysterious Cities of Gold, I knew I still loved the show, but I didn’t love the fact that it mixed the genuine history of multiple colonised peoples with made-up science fictional elements. In the show, the character Tao, whom I loved as a kid because he was one of the few animated characters in the 80s who looked vaguely like me, is from a sunken continent (called Hiva in the English dub, which is an actual part of Polynesian mythology) and his people make many of the wonders found in the series, such as the Golden Condor and the Cities of Gold themselves (which were a thing European colonisers were actually hunting for). I couldn’t quite articulate why this made me uncomfortable until I read a tweet by N K Jemisin (whose Broken Earth trilogy offers so many wonderful glimpses of a lost technological age that is central to the premise of the story). This tweet went along the lines of, “Hey, when you start saying aliens built the pyramids… that’s racist.”

Image from The Mysterious Cities of Gold
The Mysterious Cities of Gold

That tweet was life-changing for me, because while I was always writing about advanced, lost civilisations, and I was also always writing about colonialism through the lens of fantasy, I had never thought about how intertwined the two were. The reality that some people think it’s more likely that aliens built the pyramids than African civilisations (which is basically what that line of thought suggests) crystalised for me exactly what I was trying to do with my fiction. It’s a bit spoilery to say so, but this is a central tenet of my upcoming trilogy, which begins with A SONG OF LEGENDS LOST. In addition, our own history demonstrates that civilisations usually fell because of invaders or because of their own imperialistic expansion that then caused them to collapse. So how could these concepts not be intrinsically intertwined?

Many of us live surrounded by physical history that we often take for granted. I used to work in Tower Bridge in London, and every day I would walk to my very modern glass office block past the partially collapsed wall of the Tower of London. That juxtaposition of ancient and modern remains endlessly fascinating to me, and I find myself returning to it again and again in my fiction. And although the civilisation that built that wall isn’t exactly lost, our current times are so different that… I dunno, maybe it is?

Photo of M. H. Ayinde by Avel Shah
Photography by Avel Shah
M. H. Ayinde was born in London’s East End. She is a runner, a lapsed martial artist, and a screen time enthusiast. Her debut novel A SONG OF LEGENDS LOST, the first in an epic fantasy trilogy, will be published by Orbit (UK) and Saga Press (North America) in Spring/Summer 2025. Her short fiction has appeared in FIYAH Literary Magazine, F&SF, Fantasy Magazine, and elsewhere, and she was the 2021 winner of the Future Worlds Prize. She lives in London with three generations of her family and their Studio Ghibli obsession.

Women in SF&F Month officially starts today with a guest post by Kamilah Cole! Her debut novel and the first book in her Divine Traitors trilogy, So Let Them Burn—which she described as being “about sisterhood, chosen ones, dragons, anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism, and the aftermath of war” in a post on Goodreads—was a National Indie bestseller for multiple weeks and a nominee for the Goodreads Choice Awards for Young Adult Fantasy. It was recently joined by the conclusion to the series, This Ends in Embers. She also has a romantasy short story in The Secret Romantic’s Book of Magic, coming out this summer, and an adult dark academia novel, An Arcane Inheritance, coming early next year. I’m thrilled she’s here today sharing about her journey to publication with “Let Your Stories Age Like a Fine Wine, Ladies.”

Cover of So Let Them Burn by Kamilah Cole Cover of This Ends in Embers by Kamilah Cole
Cover Art by Carlos Quevedo
Cover Design by Jenny Kimura

About The Divine Traitors Duology:

Whip-smart and immersive, the bestselling Divine Traitors duology is a Jamaican-inspired fantasy that follows a gods-blessed heroine who’s forced to choose between saving her sister or protecting her homeland—perfect for fans of Iron Widow and The Priory of the Orange Tree. Pitched as a “Jamaican Joan of Arc with dragons,” the first book, So Let Them Burn, came out in January 2024, and the sequel and conclusion, This Ends in Embers, came out in February 2025.

Let Your Stories Age Like a Fine Wine, Ladies

This month, I turn 35.

Five years ago, in November 2020, I sent my first query for the book that would become So Let Them Burn.

Let me set the scene. I was not doing well. I had made that terrifying leap from my late 20s to my early 30s, and what did I have to show for it? I was two years into my dream job—Assistant Publicist at my favorite publisher—but I still lived at home with my parents and I hadn’t made any progress toward my real dream of becoming a published author. I spent the last two years of my 20s in therapy, week after week, lamenting to my therapist that my life had reached a stagnant point and I saw no way forward. It was cost-effective to live with my parents. I had no book I thought worthy of sending to agents. And I was about to age out of the decade of opportunity, where if you didn’t achieve your dreams, you probably never would. The horrors of not being in my 20s!

Suffice to say, that was nonsense.

I sent my first query in November 2020. I signed with my agent in May 2021. So Let Them Burn hit shelves in January 2024. The sequel and finale, This Ends in Embers, came out in February 2025. I moved out of my parents’ house and across the country with my sister. I moved up the ranks at my job, switched publishers, found a position even more suited to my skills. I have two Adult books—An Arcane Inheritance and Untitled Standalone #2—another Young Adult duology—starting with Wicked Endeavors—and a short story in an Adult romantasy anthology—The Secret Romantic’s Book of Magic—all coming up in the next few years.

Basically, my early 30s have been some of the best years of my life, and, based on the opinion of friends in their 40s and 50s, it only gets better from here. There’s a fear in the writing community that if you don’t break in young, if you’re not a “prodigy” or “youthful success story,” then publishing won’t wait for you. I’m here to tell you that’s absolute nonsense. So Let Them Burn is not a book I could have written when I was in my teens or in my twenties.

It’s the story of two teenage sisters who went to war far too young and came back broken in very different ways. It’s the story of what happens when the Chosen One has fulfilled their duty, at age twelve mind you, and is now all powered up with no world to save. It’s the story of living in the shadow of someone else’s brilliance and trying to carve out your own place in the world. It’s about love and resentment, about the arrogance of youth and the politics of adulthood. It’s about anti-colonialism and dragons and girls kissing. It celebrates my Jamaican heritage, something I spent most of my childhood trying to separate myself from in order to assimilate, and it features a demisexual heroine, a sexuality I have only just begun to claim.

It’s the most me duology I’ve ever written, and it was only the start of what I hope will be a very long career across a very long life. This urgency that we, especially as women, feel to accomplish as much as we can as young as we can is a poison that affects us across all industries, reinforced by the ageism of society. Tina Fey, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Patricia Arquette explored it in 2016 with the sketch “Last F*ckable Day,” where they noted that the media decided when actresses stopped being hot enough to play love interests and started being old enough to play mothers. Lady Gaga said the same on stage at the 2025 iHeartRadio Music Awards, noting, “The world might consider a woman in her late 30s old for a pop star, which is insane, but I promise you I’m just getting warmed up.”

When I look back at that woman crying in therapy five years ago, I want to reach back, place my hand on her shoulder, and tell her to give herself time to cook, to let her stories age like a fine wine. Half a decade later, with the Divine Traitors duology, she ate. And the best is yet to come.

Photo of Kamilah Cole by Lauren Banner
Photo by Lauren Banner
Kamilah Cole is a national bestselling, Dragon Award-nominated Jamaican-American author. She worked as a writer and entertainment editor at Bustle for four years, and her nonfiction has appeared in Marie Claire and Seventeen. A graduate of New York University, Kamilah lives in the Pacific Northwest, where she’s usually playing Kingdom Hearts for the hundredth time, quoting early SpongeBob SquarePants episodes, or crying her way through Zuko’s redemption arc in Avatar: The Last Airbender. You can connect with her on social media at @wordsiren or on her website kamilah-cole.com.

Women in SF&F Month Banner

This April is the fourteenth annual Women in SF&F Month here at Fantasy Cafe, starting tomorrow! For the last several years, this month has been dedicated to highlighting some of the many women doing wonderful work in fantasy and science fiction, and the site will be featuring guest posts by some of these writers throughout April. There will be new posts appearing Monday–Thursday throughout most of the month, including a book giveaway this week.

As always, guests will be discussing a variety of topics—the inspirations and ideas behind their work, the ways they approach writing, their characters, their worlds, their thoughts on tropes, their experiences as writers, and more. I’m excited to share their essays with you this month!

The Women in SF&F Month Origin Story

In case you are unfamiliar with how April came to be Women in SF&F Month here: It started in 2012, following some discussions about review coverage of books by women and the lack of women blogging about books being suggested for Hugo Awards in fan categories that took place in March. Some of the responses to these—especially the claim that that women weren’t being reviewed and mentioned because there just weren’t that many women reading and writing SFF—made me want to spend a month highlighting women doing work in the genre to show that there are a lot of us, actually.

So I decided to see if I could pull together an April event focusing on women in science fiction and fantasy, and thanks to a great many authors and reviewers who wrote pieces for the event, it happened! I was—and continue to be—astounded by the fantastic guest posts that have been written for this series. And I am so incredibly grateful to everyone who has contributed to it.

If you’ve missed the series before and want to check out some of the previous posts, you can find some brief descriptions and links for the past few years on the following pages:

This Week’s Schedule

I’m looking forward to this year’s Women in SF&F series, which starts tomorrow! There will be guest posts on Tuesday and Wednesday and a science fiction book giveaway on Thursday. This week’s guests and feature are as follows:

Women in SF&F Month 2025 Schedule Graphic

April 1: Kamilah Cole (So Let Them Burn, This Ends in Embers)
April 2: M. H. Ayinde (A Song of Legends Lost, “The Walls of Benin City“)
April 3: Book Giveaway of One Level Down by Mary G. Thompson

The Leaning Pile of Books is a feature in which I highlight books I got over the last week that sound interesting—old or new, bought or received in the mail for review consideration. Since I hope you will find new books you’re interested in reading in these posts, I try to be as informative as possible. If I can find them, links to excerpts, author’s websites, and places where you can find more information on the book are included, along with series information and the publisher’s book description.

Disclosure: I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org, and I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

One book showed up in the mail last week, and it looks delightful!

Cover of Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil by Oliver Darkshire

Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil by Oliver Darkshire

Bestselling memoirist Oliver Darkshire’s first novel will be released on May 13 (hardcover, ebook, audiobook).

This cozy fantasy novel complete with footnotes looks charming and fun, and I was rather intrigued by it after looking at the beginning.

 

A hilarious and surprisingly moving cozy fantasy novel from the best-selling author of Once Upon a Tome.

In a tiny farm on the edge of the miserable village of East Grasby, Isabella Nagg is trying to get on with her tiny, miserable existence. Dividing her time between tolerating her feckless husband, caring for the farm’s strange animals, cooking up “scrunge,” and crooning over her treasured pot of basil, Isabella can’t help but think that there might be something more to life. When Mr. Nagg returns home with a spell book purloined from the local wizard, she thinks: what harm could a little magic do?

This debut novel by beloved rare bookseller and memoirist Oliver Darkshire reimagines a heroine of Boccaccio’s Decameron in a delightfully deranged world of talking plants, walking corpses, sentient animals, and shape-shifting sorcerers. As Isabella and her grouchy, cat-like companion set off to save the village from an entrepreneurial villain running a goblin-fruit Ponzi scheme, Darkshire’s tale revels in the ancient books and arcane folklore of a new and original kind of enchantment.

A delightful and entertaining story of self-discovery—as well as fungus, capitalism, and sorcery—Isabella Nagg and the Pot of Basil is a story for those who can’t help but find magic even in the oddest and most baffling circumstances.

The Leaning Pile of Books is a feature in which I highlight books I got over the last week that sound interesting—old or new, bought or received in the mail for review consideration. Since I hope you will find new books you’re interested in reading in these posts, I try to be as informative as possible. If I can find them, links to excerpts, author’s websites, and places where you can find more information on the book are included, along with series information and the publisher’s book description.

Disclosure: I am an affiliate of Bookshop.org, and I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase.

It’s been a while since one of these posts, both because I missed writing about books received as Christmas presents due to working on other posts and I hadn’t added anything to the TBR that wasn’t already covered in one of those posts until this past week.

But before I get to the new book, here’s what you might have missed since the last one of these posts:

  • Review of The Gods Below (The Hollow Covenant #1) by Andrea Stewart This is set in a fascinating world that continues to pay the price of a bargain forged between a god and mortal to save their world long ago, but I had some issues with the pacing and the individual characters’ stories were not all that compelling.
  • Favorite Books/Media of 2024 & Year in ReviewI shared some highlights from 2024: links to the Women in SF&F Month posts from April and discussion of my favorite books, both those released in 2024 and older books read during the year. (I also gushed a bit about Baldur’s Gate 3 because I still played it a lot in 2024 and just love it so much.)
  • Anticipated 2025 Speculative Fiction Releases I highlighted some books coming out this year that sound fantastic, including some epic fantasy, fantasy inspired by history and mythology, and more.
  • Review of Mother of Rome by Lauren J. A. BearThis is a standalone novel that reimagines the legend of Romulus and Remus by telling the story of their mother, Rhea Sylvia, and her cousin Antho. It’s mythical tale with gods and goddesses that’s about love and fighting for it, and it’s what I consider to be a good, solid book: one that I’m glad I read once but am unlikely to read again.

On to the new book arrival!

Cover of The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar

The River Has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar

This novella will be released on March 4 (hardcover, ebook, audiobook read by Gem Carmella). Excerpts from The River Has Roots are available on the Macmillan website and Cosmopolitan.

This is Amal El-Mohtar’s solo novella debut after co-authoring the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awardwinning novella This Is How You Lose the Time War with Max Gladstone. She has also won awards for her short fiction, including the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus Awards.

The River Has Roots sounds rather intriguing: a murder ballad/love story featuring sisters and Faerie.

 

AN INDIE NEXT AND LIBRARYREADS PICK!
The River Has Roots is the hugely anticipated solo debut of the New York Times bestselling and Hugo Award winning author Amal El-Mohtar. Follow the river Liss to the small town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie, and meet two sisters who cannot be separated, even in death.

The hardcover edition features beautiful interior illustrations and a foil case stamp.

“Half delicious murder ballad, half beguiling love story.” —Holly Black • An absolute must-read.” —T. Kingfisher • Every sentence sings!” —Sarah Beth Durst • “Utterly enchanting.” —Fonda Lee • “A story that outlasts itself.” —Alix E. Harrow • “Truly exquisite.” —Zoraida Córdova • “A beautiful, musical, and loving story.” —Emma Törzs

“Oh what is stronger than a death? Two sisters singing with one breath.”

In the small town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie, dwells the mysterious Hawthorn family.

There, they tend and harvest the enchanted willows and honour an ancient compact to sing to them in thanks for their magic. None more devotedly than the family’s latest daughters, Esther and Ysabel, who cherish each other as much as they cherish the ancient trees.

But when Esther rejects a forceful suitor in favor of a lover from the land of Faerie, not only the sisters’ bond but also their lives will be at risk…

Mother of Rome
by Lauren J. A. Bear
400pp (Hardcover)
My Rating: 7/10
LibraryThing Rating: 4.5/5
Goodreads Rating: 4.39/5
 

As a Bookshop affiliate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

Book Description:

A powerful and fierce reimagining of the earliest Roman legend: the twins, Romulus and Remus, mythical founders of history’s greatest empire, and the woman whose sacrifice made it all possible.

The names Romulus and Remus may be immortalized in map and stone and chronicle, but their mother exists only as a preface to her sons’ journey, the princess turned oath-breaking priestess, condemned to death alongside her children.

But she did not die; she survived. And so does her story.

Beautiful, royal, rich: Rhea has it all—until her father loses his kingdom in a treacherous coup, and she is sent to the order of the Vestal Virgins to ensure she will never produce an heir.

Except when mortals scheme, gods laugh.

Rhea becomes pregnant, and human society turns against her. Abandoned, ostracized, and facing the gravest punishment, Rhea forges a dangerous deal with the divine, one that will forever change the trajectory of her life…and her beloved land.

To save her sons and reclaim their birthright, Rhea must summon nature’s mightiest force – a mother’s love – and fight.

All roads may lead to Rome, but they began with Rhea Silvia.

Mother of Rome is Lauren J. A. Bear’s second novel, following less than two years after her debut reimagining the Greek myth of the Gorgons, Medusa’s Sisters. In her sophomore work, the author turns to Roman mythology with a focus on Rhea Silvia’s story, starting before her sons Romulus and Remus were born and ending around the time their legend is just starting to take shape—but in this version, these earlier legendary events are largely set in motion through the combined efforts of Rhea and her cousin Antho, the other main character in this novel. (This is not to say the Roman twins are not legendary themselves: they are still the sons of a god, after all.)

The story’s main setup is familiar, although the author made some changes and added her own touches to further flesh out the characters and relationships. After a brief prologue set a little later, the novel opens shortly before the death of Rhea’s brother, which prompts her grieving father to abdicate the throne to her uncle. Not wanting any potential challenges to the new line of succession, Rhea’s uncle arranges for her to become a Vestal Virgin, and Rhea rebels by secretly losing her virginity to Mars the night before she joins the holy order (though some will later say she was raped, for surely the princess could not have been so wanton as to enter into such a dalliance willingly). Of course, Rhea becomes pregnant, but in this retelling, her story continues after the twins are born. When she is at death’s door, a goddess makes her an offer that would give her a chance to watch over her sons—if she’s willing to sacrifice a part of herself and live an entirely different type of life.

The novel is basically split into two parts with the first 60% focusing on the time between the change in kings and the birth of the twins and the rest covering the next 16 years or so. Although I enjoyed how the story unfolded and resolved, I did think the first part was stronger than the second: it was less rushed, and my favorite relationship in the novel was more prominent.

In addition to being a mythic story, Mother of Rome is a book about love and fighting for it. As indicated through the title and description, this includes motherhood and a woman fighting for her children, but it also includes platonic bonds and romances for both main characters (and Rhea’s is probably not with the character you think it is). But, for me, the best part was Rhea and Antho’s sisterly connection. Though they were separated for most of the book, Rhea would not have made it as far as she did without Antho’s care, support, and discretion.

I appreciated that both women’s viewpoints show how they fight for those they love and discreetly make space for their true selves in spite of the control the new king exercises over their lives, and how they both do this in similar but different ways based on their personalities and backgrounds. Having grown up as the daughter of a king and a woman who famously did not care for propriety and social rules, Rhea is rebellious and outspoken from the start. Patience and persistence do not come naturally to her, though she does learn they are necessary if she wants to survive.

Antho, on the other hand, had parents who sought perfection and always found her lacking even though she was a dutiful, obedient daughter. However, when her father began threatening those she loved—starting with Rhea, who was like a sister to her—she found her inner fierceness and became more willful. She did not abandon all caution and understood the value of patience and planning, but she also took more risks and came to see how she could use assumptions about her goodness and piety to cover her indiscretions. Antho was my favorite of the two characters, and I also appreciated that she and Rhea waited but seized opportunity when it arrived, making them stronger together.

Although I definitely missed the interplay between Rhea and Antho after Rhea’s “death,” I don’t think that is the entire reason I found the last 40% less compelling. The story was never one to delve deeply into detail, but this part not only covered a lengthy time span in fewer pages but also added a few additional viewpoints. I was also a little disappointed that it felt like their relationship was overlooked in the end, but I later realized that it wasn’t in comparison to everything else that happened: it was just that there was a lot to wrap up with a lot of different people, and there wasn’t a lot of time spent on any single interaction.

Mother of Rome is what I consider to be a good, solid book: one that I’m happy to have read once even if it didn’t have the type of depth or beautiful prose that would make it linger in memory. However, I enjoyed the reworking of the legend of Romulus and Remus from the perspectives of two women who preceded them and appreciated how Rhea and Antho handled their struggles and supported one another, even if the pacing was a bit too quick to thoroughly explore the later parts of their stories.

My Rating: 7/10

Where I got my reading copy: ARC from the publisher.

Read an Excerpt from Mother of Rome