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Crownless
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October 7, 2025
Haunting, lyrical, and quietly revolutionary
Crownless is one of those rare historical novels that manages to be both intimate and epic. J. H. M. Carlisle resurrects the forgotten queer lives of Imperial Rome—figures like Sporus, Hierocles, and Pythias—and gives them a depth, dignity, and defiance history denied them. The writing is stunning: poetic without pretension, cinematic without excess. Every page feels like it’s lit by torchlight and shadowed by empire.
What struck me most was how human these stories are. Beneath the marble and myth, Crownless becomes a meditation on identity, survival, and the violence of being rewritten by power. It’s historical fiction, but it reads like testimony.
If you loved Mary Renault’s The Persian Boy or Madeline Miller’s Circe, this book belongs beside them—only darker, sharper, and queerer.
Favorite line:
“They dressed me like a ghost. They kissed me like a grave. But that was their story. Mine is quieter.”
An unforgettable work of reclamation.
Crownless is one of those rare historical novels that manages to be both intimate and epic. J. H. M. Carlisle resurrects the forgotten queer lives of Imperial Rome—figures like Sporus, Hierocles, and Pythias—and gives them a depth, dignity, and defiance history denied them. The writing is stunning: poetic without pretension, cinematic without excess. Every page feels like it’s lit by torchlight and shadowed by empire.
What struck me most was how human these stories are. Beneath the marble and myth, Crownless becomes a meditation on identity, survival, and the violence of being rewritten by power. It’s historical fiction, but it reads like testimony.
If you loved Mary Renault’s The Persian Boy or Madeline Miller’s Circe, this book belongs beside them—only darker, sharper, and queerer.
Favorite line:
“They dressed me like a ghost. They kissed me like a grave. But that was their story. Mine is quieter.”
An unforgettable work of reclamation.
Displaying 1 of 1 review