Books book reviews Murderous Intent and Muses: Vile Lady Villains by Danai Christopoulou With sumptuous language and dramatic descriptions, Danai Christopoulou has crafted something lovely. By Alex Brown | Published on May 19, 2026 Comment 0 Share New Share “What’s done cannot be undone.” In Danai Christopoulou’s Vile Lady Villains, two queens get the chance to rewrite their narratives. We meet Lady Macbeth and Klytemnestra after they commit the heinous crimes audiences have condemned them for for generations: Lady Macbeth for conspiring with her second husband to kill her first; Klytemnestra for murdering her husband as revenge for him killing their daughter. The women are yanked from their tragic worlds into a strange new one inhabited by wraiths and terrors. They are tasked by the Fates—the Moirai to Klytemnestra, the Three Witches to Lady Macbeth—to undertake a journey they will not comprehend until it is done. In their descent into yet another land of nightmares, they find their guide, William Shakespeare, and collect objects and magics that both help and hurt them along the way. He introduces them to Shepherd, the queen of the world where fictional characters live (or are trapped, depending on your point of view). She sees the two queens, now calling themselves Claret and Anassa, as her latest subjects, but they want more for themselves than to exist at the whim of yet another ruler. As they forge new paths, they cannot help but be drawn to each other, their love growing from pools of blood. Are they vile villains, maligned mothers, femme fatales, or women who refuse to be defined by others? Before reading this book, I did a little research on the main characters and re-read William Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Aeschylus’ Oresteia. In their author’s note, Christopoulou mentioned that readers don’t have to know anything about either going in, but that they reference things from Shakespeare and the Oresteia; I am enough of a completist that I wanted to pick up on as many references as I could. I was pleased to discover quite a bit has been written on the overlap of these two women. In particular, this quote (J. Churton Collins, Studies in Shakespeare) was rattling around in my brain the entire time: “Klytemnestra in the Agamemnon might well be the archetype of Lady Macbeth. Both possessed by one idea are, till its achievement, the incarnations of a murderous purpose. In both, the motive impulses are from the sexual affections. Both, without pity and without scruple, have nerves of steel and wills of iron before which their husband and paramour cower in admiring awe, and yet in both beats the women’s heart.” Buy the Book Vile Lady Villains Danai Christopoulou Buy Book Vile Lady Villains Danai Christopoulou Buy this book from: AmazonBarnes and NobleiBooksIndieBoundTarget The debate over whether or not Shakespeare knew about the Oresteia is addressed in the novel, opening the door to a deeper conversation about stories. In Vile Lady Villains, Shepherd allows one living writer in each generation entry into her pocket world of characters. Those writers get access to endless muses to inspire their work in the real world. The writer we meet in this generation is Shakespeare. It’s about 1606, or toward the end of his career (he died in 1616). Klytemnestra never appears in a Shakespeare play, but Agamemnon, the husband she murders, appears in The Tragedy of Troilus and Cressida (1602). Lady Macbeth, the character in his play, was based on Gruoch, wife of MacBethad mac Findlaích, as described in the British history book we know he mined for inspiration, Holinshed’s Chronicles (1587).  When we first encounter these women, they come off as rather one-note. Klytemnestra can only think in terms of murder and vengeance; Lady Macbeth is weak-willed and guilt-ridden. Once they shed those names for names they choose for themselves, they also begin to shed the personalities their storytellers gave them. At one point, Anassa comes face to face with the real Gruoch and sees first hand just how much Willy Shakes rewrote her role for his own purposes and how far she’s come in rebuking that image. When Claret has her own moment of self-reflection, she comes to a similar conclusion. The real question is what comes next? Do they go back to their old, ill-fitting roles, do they let someone else write a new ending, or do they write a whole new story for themselves?  The novel has some structural weaknesses that hold it back from greatness. Sometimes the beautiful writing style was marred by anachronistic and clunky narrative choices. I would have liked more development of the other sapphic romance; it appears out of nowhere and is gone from the story just as quickly. The deus ex machina felt too pat an explanation for how Lady Macbeth and Klytemnestra ended up in the crosshairs of the Moirai. The chapters are short and tend to end just as things get exciting. Their journey often loops back around to places they’ve already been, to have conversations or revelations they’ve already had. For readers expecting something more in the romantasy vein, it likely has the effect of feeling like the story dilly-dallies. I largely enjoyed the slow progression, even if sometimes even I felt things were taking too long to get going. Vile Lady Villains is ultimately a story about stories. It is a story about storytellers; about how history is, in a way, just a collection of sometimes contradictory stories we piece together into a flimsy narrative; about how a story is changed by whatever context both the writer and the reader bring to it. It is a feminist attack on the patriarchy and a sapphic rallying cry about living your truth. Claret and Anassa’s story is an odyssey and a tempest, a katabasis and a dream. With sumptuous language and dramatic descriptions, Danai Christopoulou has crafted something lovely. [end-mark] Vile Lady Villains is published by Union Square & Co. The post Murderous Intent and Muses: <i>Vile Lady Villains</i> by Danai Christopoulou appeared first on Reactor.