Stone Blind: Medusa's Story

How it reads

Stone Blind: Medusa's Story is historical fiction (mythological retelling, specifically), and its dominant mood is melancholy. It's quietly sad, wistful and reflective. The pace is moderate — neither a page-turner nor a slow burn — so it holds up whether you read it in long sittings or short ones.

It's set in an invented world, in the historical past, told in the first person by a single narrator. Its central concerns are identity, power and politics and loss and grief. In weight it's heavy and literary — denser, more serious, and more demanding of you.

It stands alone, so there's nothing else you need to read first or after. The ending is bittersweet: it resolves, but at a price. At 371 pages it's an ordinary novel's length. It's well known, the kind of book most keen readers have heard of.