Abandoned by Booklikes

I have never read Anne Fortier's previous novel, Juliet. Apparently that was her re-imagining of the Juliet character from Romeo and Juliet. With her latest novel, "The Lost Sisterhood" she re-imagines a world in which the ancient Amazons existed.

This is novel is told from two points of view. The first point of view is set in modern times with Diana Morgan as the lead character in the narrative. Diana is a lecturer at Oxford who focuses on the Amazon mythology in her lectures. Though she is often ridiculed by other colleagues, Diana is trying to prove that the Amazons did exist. We found out through flashbacks (that were throughout this entire novel) that Diana's grandmother believed that she was an Amazon and disappeared one day when she was younger. Diana meets a mysterious man that lures her to North Africa on her quest to prove that the Amazon dis exist.

The second point of view is told from Myrina who lived in the Bronze Age. Myrina and her sister Lilli at a young age are forced to flee their village and go to a city to see about the moon goddess that their mother spoke of to them. We get to see Myrina and Lilli's travels and the people that they meet (some mentioned in Greek mythology) along the way.

The reason why I ended up giving this novel only three stars was that except for the points of view told from Myrina's character I did not really care for the rest of the novel. When the novel first began with Diana I thought that Ms. Fortier did a very good job of laying out that character and you get a very good idea of why she became fascinated and then obsessed with the Amazons. However, the modern portions of the novel quickly turned from Diana being brought in to find out more about the Amazons to a Indiana type jones adventure that quickly lost me.

It also didn't help that we have Diana dealing with a love triangle that was quickly telegraphed (at least to me) who was going to come out the winner in the end.

Additionally, there were way too many flashbacks of Diana remembering some event with her grandmother. It became too much since we also had Myrina's story to read as well.

Also, Diana herself as a character was utterly boring and seemed to not possess any type of common sense. It was just shocking to me how childish and at times dumb she would act.

Finally, the ending really did not make a lot of sense. I don't want to spoil to potential readers but to have the ending that occurred just strained any kinds of credibility. I like the idea of the Amazons but the way that the Amazon legends linked to the modern world portion of the novel I just rolled my eyes at...a lot.

The portions of the novel with Myrina were excellent and I think that Ms. Fortier does a good job of interweaving Greek mythology to her fictional world. Frankly I would have loved more details about Myrina and if the novel had consisted of just her this would have been a five star read for me.

I received this novel for free via the Amazon Vine Program.