13 Novels Set in the World of Myth

'Norse Mythology' by Neil Gaiman

For the same reason I’m staying away from the obvious recommendation of Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series, I’m skipping over Gaiman’s brilliant American Gods and highlighting his collection-of-sorts, Norse Mythology. You’d be hard pressed to find anything written by Gaiman completely devoid of a hat tip to some branch of mythology, but in Norse Mythology, Gaiman dives all the way in. A recounting of the most famous stories and their gods and goddesses from, you guessed it, Norse mythology, Gaiman’s book is reworked as a loose, soap-opera-worthy novel with Odin, Thor, Freya and all the rest speaking with a modern sensibility that makes their outlandish tales palatable for contemporary readers.

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'Ragnarok: The End of the Gods' by A.S. Byatt

While Gaiman works a bit of humor into his retelling of the Norse gods’ antics, A.S. Byatt’s Ragnarok is piercingly somber and yet captures the epic showdown of the Twilight of the Gods in all its spectacular, Wagnerian glory. Ragnarok: The End of the Gods juxtaposes the experiences of a young British girl evacuated to the countryside during World War Two with the Norse end-of-the-world myth in a startling, yet gorgeously wrought way that brings power and humanity to both sides of the coin.

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'Circe' by Madeline Miller

If there’s anyone to dominate the field of novelized Greek myths, it’s Madeline Miller. Circe—Miller’s most recent novel—tells the story of the goddess/witch/sorceress most famous for changing Odysseus and his men into swine. As with her previous novel, Song of Achilles, and her short novella, Galatea, Miller gets us into the heads of characters who previously seemed little more than statues, oil paintings or glossed-over footnotes. Aside from the direct mythological link, Circe is a dazzling, compulsive read all on its own.

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'The Watch' by Joydeep Roy-Bhattacharya

Roy-Bhattacharya’s brutal, but beautifully rendered novel set in present day Afghanistan is a more subtle interpretation of a classic Greek myth, but all of the elements of Antigone’s woeful tale are present, beginning with a lone woman stepping out onto the wreckage of a battlefield and demanding the return of her brother’s body. The Watch is a story of contemporary war and its endlessly reverberating repercussions, but it takes it cues from that ancient image of a fearless woman making a stand for what she believes to be right.

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'Daphne' by Will Boast

In Daphne, Boast embraces Greek mythology completely while still keeping a firmly modern setting as he re-imagines the twisted tale of Daphne and Apollo set in San Francisco. While Boast’s Daphne isn’t a nymph who transforms into a tree to escape the unwanted attentions and desires of Apollo, his heroine has her own tragedy: a condition which paralyzes her whenever she experiences an intense emotion. Daphne is an intriguing, and realistic, exploration of an otherwise purely fantastical event.

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'Deathless' by Catherynne M. Valente

Deathless is the fascinating retelling of the Russian myth and legend of Koschei, an evil figure spanning countless stories and appearing in myriad interpretations. Valente’s novel remakes Marya Morevna as Koschei’s bride against a brimming backdrop of everything from elves to political intrigue. A must-read for anyone looking to step outside the Western mythological cannon.

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'Redemption in Indigo' by Karen Lord

In Redemption in Indigo we are introduced to Paama, a resourceful woman who leaves her husband only to be beset upon by the djombi—the undying—who give her the Chaos Stick, a magical gift with which to navigate a world rife with tricksters and gods, including Anansi, the spider. Paama’s story is inspired by a Senegalese folktale and provides a wonderful taste of rich West African mythology. 

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