I loved this book. It was such a beautiful retelling. I always enjoy when Greek mythology is done correctly and I was especially excited to read about Medusa. This is a must read for any Medusa fan and for every female!

Take everything you think you knew about Medusa (except the turning to stone glare) and throw it out the window. Monsters are a matter of opinion. Haynes puts together several mythological threads that always were connected but are often told somewhat separately and we get the whole story of Medusa. Athena and Hermes are a comedy team trying to help the sniveling Perseus save his mother from a bad forced marriage. Zeus sends Perseus aid only because he does not want mom to marry anybody else. The voice of Medusa is as a narrator is as seductive as her stare.
Really a fantastic retelling of this classic tale.
Thanks so much for the ARC Netgalley!

I adored this book! It was so interesting. I couldn’t believe I found myself actually laughing out loud a few times while reading.

My only take away is the fact that there were so many POVs and characters that I sometimes got confused about who I was reading about at some parts.

Fun read with attitude. Laugh out loud funny take on the Medusa mythology...the author pokes fun at the traditionally gendered roles of the heroes, men and women in Greek tales. Fabulous!

As someone who has always been a fan of the Medusa myth. It was nice that Natalie Haynes write a novel focusing on her and her story. And why she was cursed. From her point of view. Not the gods nor the men who decided her fate for her.

You know the old adage, it's me not you. I want to tell Natalie Haynes that it is me as the reader who has failed. I cannot connect to the story or the characters. It is my fault as I know that millions of others love her.

thank you to netgalley for the advanced reading copy of stone blind by natalie haynes. for a greek retelling this was fantastic. i was obsessed, i read it and listened to it over audio. i have ordered several copies for my shop. this was part of the new fad of greek retellings from the feminine side of things. i loved this telling of medusa. written so beautifully i also wished i didnt know the end.

Excellent book and on my list of top books for the 2023! The premise was refreshing, entertaining, and a joy to read as the author gives us an altered version of the Medusa myth. It is laugh out loud funny (the author's ability to speak to the reader adds to the humor) yet heartbreaking as we learn the story behind the myth. Quire a different take on Olympus and the gods as studied..

I was very excited about this book going into it- Medusa has such an interesting and iconic story that I thought would be absolutely perfect for a feminist retelling. Unfortunately, I hardly found Medusa in this book at all. It didn't grab my attention and I found I was having to force myself to keep reading, so I decided to DNF at 20% ..

This book felt like it was advertised to me falsely. With the cover and title, I was expecting a feminist Medusa retelling, and instead was given the POVs of so many different characters that it was hard to stay engaged and I lost interest. Maybe if I had come into this book knowing more about mythology, the other gods' stories would have been more interesting for me. But as someone with little knowledge about mythology as a whole, I was bored.

3.5 stars
This was a fascinating read and told in Natalie Haynes signature voice. If you are not familiar with her previous work A Thousand Ships this writing style may be jarring. Haynes is funny and irreverent in her re-telling of classic myths and while I enjoy it but I know it’s not everyone’s thing.

The story is about Medusa but honestly involves a lot of different characters and their point of views including Perseus, Andromeda, Athene, Hera, Poseidon, and Medusa’s sisters Stheno and Euryale. The chapters are their own little vignettes slowly piecing out the story of Perseus and how it inevitably leads to Medusa’s downfall. I enjoyed the different perspectives and the sympathetic portrayal of Medusa. Perseus’s story is also fascinating as he’s portrayed not as the clever demigod and hero but as a bumbling and sort of stupid boy.

I think my issue with the book and something I’ve seen other reviewers echo is that there is very little Medusa in the story that is about her. I felt like while Haynes humanizes her and makes her a sympathetic character we don’t get a lot of her. There is the chapter where she meets Poseidon and a chapter where she’s grappling with the aftermath of Athene’s curse but those are the only chapters where we really get an idea of her thoughts and feelings. She shows up in other chapters of course but she’s being viewed through other people’s eyes. I think readers should go into this knowing (despite the cover) this is not really about Medusa but a re-telling of the story Perseus with a focus on women and goddesses.

Overall I did enjoy this book a lot and Haynes is one of my favorite authors in this genre. I definitely recommend with the caveat above.

I was provided a free copy of this book through NetGalley.

This fairly true-to-mythology retelling of Medusa was a compelling look into the life of one of the most interesting figures from Greek Mythology. Featuring a wide array of POVs, we get to see the entirety of the story, though the narrator is always sympathetic with Medusa as is good and right. I particularly loved the intersections from Medusa's beheaded head who is full of indignant fury. TW for lots of rape, because, you know, Greek gods.

The story of Perseus and Medusa is one of the most well-known in all of mythology, the tale of a dangerous woman with snakes for hair who can turn anyone who looks into her eyes into stone. She is beheaded by the hero Perseus, who is sent on a quest to bring back the head of a Gorgon to save his mother from an undesirable marriage. With some help from a variety of tools provided by the gods, Perseus uses a shield to avoid looking directly at the supposed monster and then cuts her head off, ultimately using it to turn all his enemies to stone upon his return home. Medusa is given very little perspective or agency in this story, and her life is generally presented as less interesting than the fact of her death and all the things Perseus can now do with a relic of her body.

Stone Blind does its best to change that, reframing Medusa’s story as one of a young woman deeply wronged by a patriarchal society more interested in propping up the success of the dim, bro-y Perseus, whose victories are explicitly made possible only by repeated intercession of the gods who think he’s an idiot. Here, Medusa is the only mortal in a family of minor immortals, a beautiful young woman who doesn’t yet have snakes for hair or a deathly murderous gaze. Her loving relationship with her two sister Gorgons is a substantial part of the story and for a time they live happily on their lands on the north coast of Africa. But when the teenage Medusa catches the eye of sea god Poseidon, he rapes her in the temple of Athena—-forcing her to submit by threatening to violently kill all the humans in their kingdom if she does not. Reinforcing the patriarchal tendencies of the ancient world, Athena’s fury is not directed at her uncle for violating her holy place, but at Medusa for allowing it, and the rest of the story sees the goddess doing her best to victim shame and punish a young girl whose life has already been brutally violated. Here, Medusa’s story seen as a tragedy of women, not the triumph of a man.

After reading "Circe" I had high hopes for "Stone Blind." A redemption story for Medusa? I'm so in!

I was disappointed, however, that this story involved Medusa rather than actually being HER story. "Circe" was told from her point of view and allowed readers to get inside her head and get to know one of the maligned women of Greek mythology. I expected "Stone Blind" to do the same for Medusa, but instead I got a watered-down redemption arc that didn't intimately involve her.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for a digital copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinions.

I think we've become inundated in Greek Mythology retellings and revamps, this one didn't wow me. A second round purchase for most libraries.

My experience with reading this book is weird. I liked it from the beginning, and I was interested all the way through. But also, I felt myself not necessarily wanting to pick it up. But the second that I did, I was totally drawn into the story and didn’t want to stop reading. It was very strange.

It almost reminds me of Lincoln in the Bardo. The way that you are repeatedly picked up and sat down in new places in new points of view in new narrative structures and you never quite know where you are going next.

This isn’t unpleasant, but it is a little bit unsettling. But in a good way. You never quite know exactly what’s going to happen, but you do feel that you are in very sure and capable hands.

Also, it is funny as all get out. Especially the conversations between the gods and the mortals had me absolutely cackling.

I was both I was equally drawn in and repulsed at different points in the story like I wanted to read it, but then it was when I wasn’t reading it I wanted to be away from it and then it would draw me in again, and the style is the equivalent of the "slap and stroke" management style where you’re like drawn in by praising and repulsed by criticism And you never know what’s coming next. That’s how I felt about this book

Also, we have to talk about the fact that this book has so many characters in it. It is not something that I normally struggle with and then, even in this case, I don’t want to use the word struggle because although I never quite knew if I was going to see a character whose point of you I was getting for a chapter if I was going to see that character again it was kind of OK with me and it but this is a criticism that I’ve heard a lot of people say about this book, that it was just people by so many different characters that it was hard hard hard to keep everything straight.

By the time the book ended, I felt that she had done a better job than I had suspected she could of bringing the various voices together.

Well, I still think that there were many characters that I am not absolutely sure why they were in the story, I would say about 85% of it came together for me by the end.

I really think this would be such a good book club book. And I enjoyed it immensely. I think I’m going to be thinking about it for a while, and I definitely want to read some of her earlier works, including 1000 ships.

As a fan of Miller's Circe and Saint's Ariadne, I was thrilled to find Haynes' take on mythology, Stone Blind. The Medusa myth is one I've always been interested in, and this feminist retelling not only offers a new view on female monstrousness, but also touches on the meaning of family, love, and humanity. A bit slow paced, but absolutely worth it.

4.5 stars

This was a fantastic book! Very emotional and exceptionally well-told. The shifting POVs also made this story nuanced in a way readers wouldn't have been privy to if we were only relegated to Medusa's perspective. I can't wait to find more of Ms Haynes' novels to read!!

I absolutely adored this Medusa story. It definitely lives up to the hype and popularity of the genre. A very well done retelling of one of Greek mythology's most misunderstood characters.

Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes is a powerful retelling of ancient myth. Haynes combines her substantial knowledge of the classics with her understanding of human nature and storytelling to rewrite the messages of the gods in ways that resonate powerfully today. Her deft use of point of view, narrative voice, and humor lead the reader on a quest through the lands of the gods, only to bring us home to look in our mirrors and see the monsters lurking there. On the first page of the book Haynes says, “And the monster? Who is she? She is what happens when someone can’t be saved.” In Stone Blind Haynes gives us the opportunity to look at our stories, shift our points of view, and save those that are ours to save.

This book was so much fun; a witty retelling of the Perseus/Medusa myth that reads like an Olympus version of the ‘Dallas’ soap opera with a nod to the biased assumptions we make about Greek heroes and the role of women in the classic myths.