Hope is the thing with feathers. Unfortunately, in Daedalus Is Dead by Seamus Sullivan, hope is Icarus, and Icarus, like his father, is dead.

This isn’t a spoiler for many reasons—not only is it a cultural touchstone, he also dies within the first few pages of the novella. Daedalus spends the remainder of the book alternating between telling us how they got to that inflection point and what followed. He takes us through his own myth and beyond it into what follows, both in life and in death, for a man who built wonders in order to contain horrors.

Daedalus is a genius engineer and inventor, but his eagerness for fame has led him to Minos, king of Crete, who slowly turns him from a valued advisor to a terrified captive. Minos’ unquenchable thirst for power has Daedalus constantly designing better contrivances for battle and oppression, and Daedalus complies with an increasingly heavy heart. His one solace is his son, whom he tries to protect from the worst of their reality.

Icarus is transformed in Daedalus Is Dead from a cautionary metaphor about hubris into the object of longing. Like Eurydice following behind, Icarus hovers above the narrative, reaching further, falling deeper, always a little beyond his father’s (and our) reach. He is the one remaining hope for Daedalus, some proof that Daedalus is capable of creating something that does not bring harm, some promise that the next generation will be better than his own.

Elegant, propulsive prose supports an intensively thoughtful book about the cost of our achievements and the consequences of our willful ignorance, all through the lens of Greek myths.

The truism about myth remains true here, that myths do not tell us who we were in the past but who we are in the present. And this book is very much who we are in the current moment, selfish and confused, making terrible compromises with power to protect what is most precious to us. There is probably no coming back from these compromises either: power corrupts, and attempts at repair will never truly restore what was lost, Sullivan tells us.

That’s bleak. This is a bleak book. Maybe not entirely hopeless, but certainly close. That’s not a criticism! You can argue that authors might owe us feelings, in that they’re usually trying to evoke emotional responses, but they certainly don’t owe us particular feelings. As far as despair goes, this is certainly a potent book. It’s well-written, too, elegant in its metaphors and its pacing. Every page feels urgent and every development feels earned.

It’s often noted that the gods of Greek mythology can be messy and selfish, or even downright psychopathic and narcissistic, and Sullivan goes all in on this interpretation. There is almost nothing redeeming (and what a fraught choice of words there!) about them—the best that can be said of some is that they absent themselves. The same goes for heroes, who are dim, musclebound louts—at least, according to Daedalus.

Despite his solid and methodical profession, Daedalus is not so meticulous when it comes to his own story. He’s a very unreliable narrator, and his failings are fascinatingly mundane. This is not a dig at the author—Daedalus having the most ordinary and petty narcissisms is a clear and very clever narrative tool. Sullivan exposes through his blatant self-deception how even a smart man is neither necessarily wise nor good, but can talk himself into believing that he is.

For a while. But the cracks are always there in the foundations, ready to tumble Daedalus lower and lower even as he soars in his momentary triumphs. Earth, the underworld, even Olympus—to Daedalus without Icarus, all places are Hell.

And let me briefly talk about that word, Hell. Sullivan uses it in order to refrain from using the word Hades, which his characters treat with extreme fear. I can understand why this choice was made, but I’m not sure I agree with it. Ancient Greeks were cautious about mentioning Hades the person, but they did refer to him, and they certainly referred to his realm as Hades, too. The word “Hades,” whether the person or the place, occurs at about 50 times in the Iliad alone. But let’s assume that this is a peccadillo of Dedalus, who is, after all, a highly cautious man. There’s still the issue that Hell, with its heavily Christian connotations in today’s usage, is not the same thing as the Greek afterlife. Hades (the place) did not have moral dimensions. Yes, there was Elysium for heroes, and even elevation to Olympus for the god-born and/or truly great, but these were achievements of physical or mental ability, not marks of adherence to laws or acts of supreme goodness. Valor, not virtue, defined Hades.

To call re-name Hades as Hell introduces too much confusion of purpose, I think. Put simply, Hell is a bad place and Hades is a neutral place. Daedalus is certainly in Hell, in that he’s in a place that is hostile to him and feels like a punishment, but if anything, that’s more to do with Daedalus. Was that the intention? I’m not sure.

This story doesn’t have to be intensely (Ancient) Greek to be effective, but the friction between the Greek origins and the novel’s intensely singular perspective on them become difficult at points. These interpretations are not unwarranted—but they are also interpretations, make no mistake. And they are grim. Heroes are only out for themselves, and there is no accountability for bad men. The wicked get away with their cruelties and are even rewarded for them. Minos, far from being judged for his despotism, is made a judge of the afterlife. Zeus, who theoretically oversees the whole scheming, seething mass of human misery, is only interested in revelry. Even Dionysus, god of wine and revelry, cannot stand his father’s drunken boorishness! He and Ariadne, like Daedalus, make no attempt to change hearts or minds. They only try to leave as soon as they can get away.

Sullivan casts gods and mortals both in the worst possible light, a dismal universe in which might is the only right, and opting out is the only relief. But these are not the only ways to see the stories. In fact, these are not even the only stories. In Daedalus is Dead, Daedalus encounters Prometheus chained, the eagle goring out his liver, but never mentions that Hercules freed Prometheus from his chains, even though Hercules comes up elsewhere in the book. The hopelessness of this narrative is deliberate, and more the product, I think, of the current moment than any ancient one. There are horrors in the myths to be sure, both intentional and those we only see with the distance of history. But there are wonders there, too. And humor. And defiance. The Greeks were not resigned to tyrants.

Neither is Daedalus, despite his many failures. He keeps getting up. He keeps trying to do better. He keeps trying to reach his out-of-reach son. And that makes the book’s harsh conclusions bearable. If there are no gods and no heroes, then at least we have our own stubbornness. At least we have a few allies, some with more power and some with less, but all with something. At least we have the power to change and try. I will absolutely be shelving this prominently and proudly among my Greek myth books as a standout among retellings. It’s such a big, furious swing at the genre, and I deeply respect its unwillingness to pull even one punch.

Daedalus Is Dead will be released September 30, 2025.