Review: Babylonia by Costanza Casati

Title: Babylonia
Author: Costanza Casati
Publication: July 4, 2024 by Penguin Books Ltd
Genre: Historical Fiction, Mythology Retelling
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Rating: 5/5★

There are whispers of her fame, in the land long since turned to dust. The Queen who rose from nothing – and changed everything . . .

Ancient Assyria, 9^th century BC. An orphan is raised on the outskirts of a brutal empire. Heir to a tragic prophecy, Semiramis dreams of wielding power and escaping her destiny.

Far away, a reluctant prince walks the corridors of his gilded palace in a city built by the gods. Ninus would rather spend his time in books and poetry than conquering the world of men. But when he meets Onnes, a broken, beautiful soldier, something shifts. And as they grow into young men, their friendship deepens into something fiercer.

That is until Semiramis arrives, throwing their fragile world into chaos. A savage love soon grows between them all. When their lives are caught up in a brutal war, jealousy and passion will force their hand: bend the world – and one another – to the will of the gods, or what doesn’t bend, destroy.

“Immortality doesn’t mean living for ever. It means surviving even after your heart stops beating and your body is burned. It means living in myth, in stories.”

As soon as I saw that Babylonia would be a retelling of queen Semiramis from Mesopotamian legend and myth, I knew I had to read it. And now after having devoured this beautiful story I can say that it went beyond what I imagined and outweighed my every expectation. Costanza Casati more than delivered with this incredible, and then some!

The story starts in the village of Mari, located in Eber-Nari, a western province of the Assyrian empire. Semiramis, orphaned when she was just a baby and taken in by the chief shepherd of the village. As she grows up, she is often beaten, belittled and bullied by her father and the village boys who taunt her mercilessly for how she was abandoned by her mother who commited suiced. Now that she’s of age to get married she knows that if she does gets married to one of the villagers she’ll remain a nobody with no safety and no power over her life. This all changes when the new governor of Eber-Nari arrives in the village, send by the new king of Assyria. Onnes, the new governer, is drawn to Semiramis and the two get married before he takes her away from Mari to Kalhu, the capital of the Assyrian empire. But living in the royal palaces is no easy feat, there are always secrets and rumours swirling around and Semiramis is going to have to plot and scheme to keep ahold of the power she so carefully constructed for herself, and to ascend to even more.

The heart of this story was the relationship between Seminaris, her husband Onnes and the king Ninus. These three characters on their own were very complex, vibrant and undeniably broken, yet they were very different from one another. Their relationships with each other was also fascinating to read about, always changeable and developing in different ways. From hate to love to aloof and detached to needing each other whether it was Semiranis with Onnes or Semiramis with Ninus or Ninus and Onnes. Complicated doesn’t even begin to cover them as characters. The secondary characters were just as intriguing to me. The king’s mother, Nisat, for example was a fantastic and intricate character. There also was Ribat, who has been born as a slave but was always dreaming of becoming a scribe. He was one of my favorites for sure.

Babylonia is the author’s second book but the first one of hers that I’ve read. I didn’t have to chance to read her debut novel Clytemnestra yet but you can bet I want to read it as soon as possible. Constanza Casati’s writing was just stunning, even bewitching. It really took me away to Ancient Assyria with her vivid descriptions and lyrical prose. It was actual perfection in my mind and I couldn’t get enough of reading. It truly was hard to put the book down at times. It has a very serious chance to become my favorite book by the end of the year. I just know this already.

Aside from political intrigue the story was also very brutal and bloody at times. The author definitely didn’t shy away from the violence of living in the Assyrian empire and going to war. There were battles that made me really nervous because I was worried for many of the characters participating in said battles, which included Seminaris herself like the clever badass that she was, even though she hated herself later on for things she had to do during wartimes. We very much see characters dealing with PTSD in different kinda ways, even though in ancient historical times this was not named as such. There were many emotional moments where I had to blink away tears, which doesn’t happen to me all that often when I’m reading.

What else can I say than I freaking loved this book. It was such a good page-turner and I wish I could give it a million stars because that is what the book and Seminaris deserve without a doubt. Babylonia wasn’t your run-of-the-mill mythology retelling, it had so much more going for it than that. The setting of the ancient Near East, the characters that contained multitudes, the beautiful writing, everything was just perfectly crafted for a wonderful and poignant read. Costanza Casati is the new fresh voice of mythology retellings!

About the author:

Costanza Casati was born in Texas and grew up in a village in Northern Italy, where she studied Ancient Greek, and Ancient Greek literature, under one of the country’s most rigorous academic programmes. She is a graduate of the prestigious Warwick Writing MA in the UK, and has worked as a screenwriter and journalist. Her debut novel, Clytemnestra, has sold into 18 territories worldwide, is a Times bestsellerand a nominee for Best Fantasy in the Goodreads Choice Awards. Babylonia, set in the fierce world of the Assyrian Empire, is her second novel.

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