Rating: 
Summary: A slow read, but worth finishing
Review: I was assigned to read the book for my English 10 class over the summer. It took me almost two weeks to finish because the story doesn't really get interesting until about a hundred pages into the book. It was hard to follow, and I had to read many of the passages several times in order to understand, but I was truly hooked when I reached the last fifty pages, and I recommend this book to one with patience and an interest in mythology.
Rating:
Summary: Lost in the Maze
Review: I've long been an admirer of Ms. Renault. I've read pretty much everything she's written. I'm accustomed to being sucked into the story from the very first pages, and to come away at the end with something I didn't have at the beginning, be it understanding, compassion or a better developed historical sense. This book actually disappointed me. I kind of forced myself to finish it, hoping for the magical moment when I BECAME the book. It never happened. Although most of the characters are fairly three-dimensional, the story lags and finally edges toward the fantasitical usually associated with Anne McCaffery. Still, Ms. Renault at her less-than-best is much, much better than most.
Rating:
Summary: a good book...
Review: It was a cool story and all, i was never bored, but it lacked the qualities of the writing pyramid. It had an exposition, and then the rest of it seemed like rising action, bit it never peaked. It was like a plateu. The writing itself was wonderful. The author really got into the character.
Rating: 
Summary: A classical myth transformed into an adventure story
Review: Mary Renault revitalizes the ancient Greek myth of Theseus, Ariadne, and the Minotaur by following its hero's thoughts and actions as a series of rites of passage. Theseus, no longer innocent, leaves home, traverses dangerous territory, kills his first adult opponent, beds a queen, and returns home triumphant, only to volunteer to be one of the youths annually sent to Crete as doomed tribute to King Minos and as mortally perilous bull-dancing entertainment for the king's minions. He welds together a team so flawlessly attuned and unselfish that all its members survive, and he then goes on to new adventures. Because of the book's explicit (though tasteful) sex scenes, I was surprised to learn from a teenager who spotted the title on my beach towel that he had read it in his freshman year at a parochial prep school in Connecticut. But then I realized that The King Must Die is indeed an adventure story which teaches tenderness and consideration as well as sexual politics to its intended young audience. The descriptions and extended similes are Homeric in their richness, and the story is faithful to accepted versions of Greek mythology.
Rating:
Summary: exquisite
Review: Mary Renault's historical fiction is, perhaps, the best ever written, and this book is the cream of the crop. The storytelling is brilliant, and the writing itself is exquisite, almost poetry in places.Here is the story of Theseus as it might have actually taken place-his boyhood in a provincial Greek town, his quest to find his father in Athens, his rise to princehood, his enslavement to the Cretans, and his fiery life among the bull dancers in The Labyrinth, Knossos, the seat of King Minos. Theseus's story is a pre-Iliad legend. This is the story of the man who may have been Achilles' hero. Renault milks the legend and the historical material for every scrap of cohesive storyline and fills in the gaps with superb insight and truly clever inventions. Her Theseus is a meticulously rendered flesh and blood human being, and the whole culture of ancient Greece comes gloriously to life under her pen. You will want to go to Knossos after you read this book and see the bull dances painted there on the old walls. This is a story that gets into your blood, under your skin. Renault also brings out the cultural struggle between notions of sky gods and earth gods. Theseus believes himself to be the son of Pseidon and is bound by honor and traits of character to the sky gods. He has a smoldering feud with the goddess who would become Aphrodite and all she stood for and a deep love of the goddess who would become Athena and all she stood for. No conclusively supernatural events enter Renault's tail. She leaves possibilities open, but primarily uses ideas of religion to show the struggles going on in the culture and in the mind of her protagonist. She also brings out the full horror of the maenads, the female cult of Dianesis so savage that the Romans later banned them. Everything that is best and worst about ancient Greece finds some representation in this story, which is in fact only the first half of Theseus's life. Renault finishes her tail in The Bull From the Sea, which is an equally stunning, though much sadder, performance.
Rating:
Summary: Engaging portrayal of the final fall of the Goddess religion
Review: Mary Renault's novel tells a story of the patriarchal take-over of the last surviving Goddess culture in classical times. The island of Crete...perhaps because it is an island...managed to avoid the patriarchal invaders' influence for hundreds of years. Renault does a beautiful job of elequently weaving in the details of the culture that once radiated from paleolithic and neolithic mesopotamia to the surrounding geography. The story centers around the young male hero's life, but it doesn't tell the one sided story so many heroic epics portray. (Beowulf, The Odyssey, The Illiad, The Aeneid for example) The details of the surviving Goddess culture are wonderful and connect the entire story. It's a real treat to read a heroic epic (part of the patriachy's myth format) filled with the remnents of truth that normally are forgotten or ignored. Another great Goddess-history novel is June Rachuy Brindel's "Phaedra." It's healthy to read history from a different perspective...namely that of herstory.
Rating:
Summary: Fresh as ever.
Review: My old paperback copy of this wonderful novel (with a list price of fifty cents!) quotes the Chicago Tribune: "Miss Renault's skill in making the past vivid has never been topped." It's still true, I think. Paging through Theseus' adventures, I've been struck once again by the perfect fusion of vividness and simplicity that Renault managed in her narrative style. There's nothing else quite like her description of a bull-dance or a boar-hunt, and her deliciously understated eroticism is as pleasing to me now as it was forty years ago. -- C. B. Rykken (editor@historical-novels.com)
Rating: 
Summary: another one bites the dust
Review: One after another the great myths fall to a writer who tries to melodramatize, and tune them up. In this story the great tale of Theseus is butchered. I really can not see how such a great story can be shreded to nonsense. Honestly, LEAVE ALL THE CLASSICS ALONE. You will NEVER be able to make them any beter than they already are. With that said now I will move onto the actual book. Bad writing PERIOD. The writing is a stab at being origional, but it is way too choppy. And at some times this book actually became boring. As the book went on, the boerdom streaks became more common. WOW, HOW DOES ONE MAKE A GREAT TALE BORING,.....MAGIC.By the way, if you disagree with me, then you are wrong.
Rating:
Summary: 5 stars for Mary Renault
Review: Readers of all ages interested in romance, historical fiction and Greek mythology will love this novel! My second time reading it was as captivating as the first. Renault retells the myth of Theseus adding a human touch and a sense of irony throughout. We see that he is really a man; savvy, and possessing extraordinary luck - he is a very likeable persona. He is somewhat of a womanizer, though this can be overlooked; for him to be any other way would be an anachronism. The story is realistic and touching - it will satisfy any intelligent reader with a taste for all types of fiction. Don't miss the sequel!
Rating: 
Summary: Beautiful reworking of Greek mythology
Review: Renault has a marvelous way of combining modern sensibility with mythological wonder. She narrates with an empirical, 20th-century eye, but interprets from an ancient perspective. Her recreation of the Theseus' myth is very believable. Advice to younger readers: Learn the Bullfinch version of the story first, then read the book. Renault offers an excellent lesson on interpretation, but might be confusing otherwise.
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