I had a hard time getting into Hearts that Cut. I suspect it might have helped to have read the first of the duology (Threads that Bind) before digging into this one. I simply never felt settled or oriented until about one-third of the way through. I found it so tedious that it took me many nights of reading to plow through it.
Hatzopoulou tries to blend magic with Greek mythology but is far less successful in creating such than Rick Riordan in his multiple Greek/Roman gods series.
That said, there were a few things I liked: the idea that descendants of the original Greek Fates (Clotho, the Spinner; Lachesis the Measurer/Apportioner; and Atropos, who cuts the threads and ends peoples’ lives) perform similar tasks in the book, but their names have been replaced by their jobs: weaver, drawer, cutter. I particularly liked that these newer Fates could see the threads of peoples’ lives and that there was a cost to their performance of the duties; for example, when a cutter cuts someone’s thread, she also loses one of her own.
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Hearts that Cut (Razorbill, June 18, 2024) is available through:
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