52 pages • 1 hour read
Scarlett St. ClairA Touch of Ruin
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2020A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Literary Context: Ancient Myth and Modern Retellings
St. Clair’s Hades x Persephone series belongs to a growing and popular subgenre of fiction that retells ancient myths of the Western world from the woman’s point of view. While 20th-century authors such as Mary Renault with The King Must Die, Marion Zimmer Bradley with The Firebrand, and Ursula K. le Guin with Lavinia established the appeal of this type of story, the ranks of classical retellings have more recently swelled with the works of authors including Margaret Atwood, Pat Barker, Madeline Miller, Claire North, Emily Hauser, and Natalie Haynes. Working within the cultural and historical confines of a conjectured historical era, these authors explore the female experience and themes of passion, empowerment, and betrayal that lie beneath the tales of war and conquest and of heroes and gods.
The story of Hades and Persephone is one of the oldest Greek myths, and the earliest mentions of Persephone date to the second millennium BCE, where she is also called Kore. In the version of the story most well-known today, Persephone, the goddess of spring, is the daughter of Zeus, the god of thunder and ruler of the upper realm, and Demeter, the goddess of grain and the harvest. One day, walking in a field with her mother, the young and beautiful Persephone is kidnapped by Hades, who is Zeus’s brother and ruler of the underworld. He brings her to the realm of the dead and insists on making her his queen. Demeter searches the earth for her daughter, and in her sorrow, nothing will grow; crops fail, and fearing that humans face starvation, Zeus forces Hades to relinquish Persephone back to her mother.
However, while she was in the underworld, Persephone ate seeds from a pomegranate, and so, by Hades’ law, she belongs to his realm. Zeus and Demeter strike a bargain wherein Persephone is allowed to spend half the year with her mother, and these months become the growing season, when vegetation thrives and crops grow. Persephone spends the other half of the year below the earth, ruling as Hades’ queen; above ground, these are the months of winter. Her story is, at heart, an etiological myth, explaining the cycle of the seasons in the region where this myth originates. In the epic poems of Homer, Persephone appears as the goddess of the underworld, a co-ruler with Hades, and a figure of dread.
Series Context: Hades x Persephone
In recasting the myth of Hades and Persephone, St. Clair chooses a vaguely contemporary setting, which is, as in the ancient myths, a realm populated by mortals over which supernatural beings hold sway and that has access to other realms, like the underworld. As a romance, the books make use of a trope that enjoyed wild success in the Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey series—that of a powerful, jaded man falling for a young woman, drawn by her innocence and goodness. The Hades x Persephone series also borrows from the popular subgenres of the billionaire romance, mafia romance, and dark romance with its supernaturally powerful and dangerous hero, here the God of the Underworld, an immortal who has lived for millennia.
The series also borrows from the new adult genre and its common themes of grappling with identity, passion, and maturity. In A Touch of Darkness, Persephone is newly graduated from college and trying to establish herself as a journalist. She is emerging from beneath the thumb of her controlling mother, Demeter, who denied Persephone her chance to grow up as a goddess. Masquerading as a mortal, Persephone meets and challenges Hades, whom she first disdains for his reputation as a “bad boy.” She comes to understand his deeper dimensions, and they draw her into an affair with him. Their shared passion awakens Persephone’s power, and learning to use her power is a continuing theme of A Touch of Ruin.
At the time of this guide’s publication, there are seven books in the series. Four of the books (A Touch of Darkness, A Touch of Ruin, A Touch of Malice, and A Touch of Chaos, books 1, 3, 5, and 7) are told from Persephone’s point of view and describe the progress of her relationship with Hades, her relationship with her growing magical power, and her reckoning with her influence and identity as Hades’ lover and eventual queen. Three of the books, those identified as the Hades Saga (books 2, 4, and 6 in the larger series), describe events in the same period of time as Persephone’s books but include additional information about Hades’ interactions with the gods, demigods, and other supernatural beings of New Greece.
A Touch of Chaos, the final book in the series, involves an epic battle among the gods, waged over who will have control over humanity. While Persephone’s books deal largely with her maturity into a goddess, magic wielder, and queen, Hades’ books address the larger social and cultural clashes of his world, recasting the old myths in ways that resonate with modern social problems, such as the great power wielded by a few and the effects of unfettered capitalism, corrupt governments, and celebrity worship.
St. Clair, raised in Oklahoma, belongs to the Muscogee Nation and is a “fierce advocate of inclusivity […] her books celebrate agency, women’s empowerment, and sex positivity” (“About Me.” Scarlett St. Clair). She earned an undergraduate degree in English writing and a master’s degree in library science and information services before she moved to writing full-time. She began self-publishing in 2014 and released the first book in the Hades x Persephone series in 2019. When those books became popular, in part due to exposure on the social media platform TikTok, St. Clair arranged to release her work through Bloom Books, an imprint of Sourcebooks, a traditional publisher.
Related Titles
By Scarlett St. Clair
