Another thing that’s noticeable, when you move straight on to this after the first book, is that the integration of other myths no longer works so well either. As a result, the book feels rather disjointed and episodic, skipping from one event to the next like counting beads on a string, rather than having the strong narrative unity of the first novel, in which the same themes recurred in different stages of Theseus’ youth. While The King Must Die focused on just a few years in great detail, The Bull from the Sea sets itself the challenge of covering the rest of Theseus’ life in what is, by historical-novel standards, a rather modest number of pages. If you know your myths, you’ll know that Phaedra later develops another, much more destructive desire for something she can’t possess, with searingly tragic consequences. Little does she know she has become simply a pawn in a game of political expedience, or that she will never truly be able to command her husband’s heart.

And yet she can be his lover, but never his wife or his queen, because that honour belongs to another: Minos’ little daughter Phaedra, who lingers in Crete dreaming of her promised marriage to Theseus. Later, he finds himself longing for the freedom to choose a queen who would be the companion of his soul as well as his state: the magnificent Hippolyta, leader of the warrior cult of the Moon Maiden. He’ll never truly have that liberty again, but he plays at it in episodic raids with his friend Pirithoos, the charismatic pirate king of the Lapiths. As king in Athens, Theseus yearns for the days when he had the freedom to wander wherever his feet took him.

It’s a rather sober, melancholic way to open a book, but it’s very apt because The Bull from the Sea is all about longing for unattainable things. They may be conquering heroes, but that means they must suffer the fate of heroes, in being set apart from all they loved before. With a year of Cretan polish behind them, they too have changed and they find that their family, friends and lovers might as well be strangers. They long to be able to step back into the relationships they left behind, but things have changed forever. No one except their fellow Cranes can comprehend the thrill of life in the bull-ring and the dazzling achievement of having survived. But the joy fades quickly: Theseus is greeted by news of his father’s premature death and, for all the Cranes, the Athens they return to seems smaller and more provincial than the city they left.

Having brought down the ancient Cretan house of Minos, he comes home to Athens flushed with glory, accompanied by his loyal team of bull-leapers, the Cranes. Published four years after The King Must Die, this book picks up the thread of Theseus’ story once again.

The bull from the sea by mary renault