These Bright and Perilous Designs

by Felicia Martinez

A layered, lyrical, and heartbreaking novella.



In the near future, a grieving son uncovers the secret journal entries of his genius mother-and the life and love story she tells is layered across multiple universes.



In one universe, Phaedra falls in love-tragic and doomed-with Hippolytus. In another, the pair are brilliant and misunderstood software engineers whose creations threaten the world.



In ancient Greece, in the near future, in every world, some things remain Phaedra and Hippolytus' love is doomed, and Phaedra's scorned husband Theseus will do anything to seize their designs.



A novella written in vivid nonlinear prose perfect for fans of NK Jemisin's The Broken Earth Trilogy and the myth-laden heartbreak of Hadestown, These Bright and Perilous Designs reimagines the Greek myth of Phaedra and Hippolytus with neurodiverse and asexual characters. It is a love story spanning lifetimes and a study of grief for those left behind.

176 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 20, 2026

About the author

Felicia Martínez is an artist and writer from eastern New Mexico, though she now calls the San Francisco Bay Area home. She is the author of The Other Lives of Altagracia Sanchez (Querencia Press) and These Bright and Perilous Designs (Thinking Ink Press). She has been guest poetry editor at The Deadlands, the SFPA Elgin Awards Chair, a Dream Foundry Contest for Emerging Writers finalist, and received her PhD in English from Stanford University.

Reviews

[Minerva · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received an eARC from the publisher.

These Bright and Perilous Designs mixes science fiction with Greek mythology in an original manner. We follow the story of Acamas, the child of tech giant Theseus, who is trying to find out what happened to his mother and his stepbrother, both of whom are now deceased. From their journal entries, Acamas tries to piece together the truth. However, something strange is going on, as the timestamps of some of the journal entries are wrong and they seem to come from a different universe: that of Greek mythology.

The book mixes a lot of themes that speak to me: Greek myth, sci fi with self-aware artificial intelligences, asexuality, neurodivergence, found family, and mourning one's mother. It took me a little while to get used to the stream-of-consciousness style, but letting go of the reins of wanting to understand every little detail made it possible to fully enjoy the story and its vibes. Finding meaning in the chaos of life by drawing parallels with beloved pieces of fiction was a fitting theme indeed. While I had very little memory of Phaedra's original myth, Felicia Martinez' writing neatly guided me through the story without it feeling like anything was overexplained. Sometimes poetic, often philosophical, aware of environmental consequences, and ultimately a story about love, I think this book will stay on my mind for quite some time.

[Clara Ward · Rating 5 out of 5]

As someone who enjoys stories within stories, I found this mix of literary and science fiction fascinating. The storytelling is non-linear and sometimes ambiguous as it builds and interweaves perspectives. It worked for me despite my limited memory of Phaedra and surrounding myths, although I suspect those with deeper knowledge may appreciate the mythic aspects even more. The portrayals of neurodivergent and ace identities across tellings and time periods intrigued me, and the very sweet Star Trek references and tech jokes made me smile.
Note: I was provided an advance copy of this book by the publisher.

[Tayu · Rating 4 out of 5]

ARC Review - Poetic, mad, and deep

This is once again a story I did not expect. It met my expectations of being a retelling of a myth, but that is basically everything it met and exploded into so much more and something beyond every imagination.

I was hit with this story beyond a linear path, where future and past kept meeting and intertwining and how grief mixed with desire and want. It was a beautiful experience I can hardly reproduce.

I am grateful I got to experience Phaedra and Hippolytus's story in this fashion and how it mixed AI and Sci-Fi elements into it as well. The messsage of the dangers of AI felt natural and almost too real that I had to put the book down to think and reflect some more over the words on the page that I just read. This book truely makes you think beyond just a simple "This is great" and I love it when books stay with you long after you have read them. This is one of those books.

I am sorry my review is a bit messy but I can't say much else beyond the words I have already written for I am a bit speechless and don't know how else I can word how much I enjoyed this one. You get to feel so many emotions while jumping throuh the story and navigating the plot and it just carries you trough the book with ease, if you allow it. Don't fight the book and stop questioning the flow. I promise it will be an experience worth reading.

[Nicolle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nearly two years ago now, I read another novella from Felicia Martínez and fell in love with her writing. I still think about The Other Lives of Altagracia Sanchez often. Felicia just has such a beautiful way with words and prose. These Bright and Perilous Designs follows that style perfectly.

After the sudden death of his mother, Acamas is left to uncover the truth about the end of her life and bear witness to an unfolding plot of revenge. Told through snippets of digital journals, conversations, memories, fantasy, and even some transcripts— a story of a powerful, emotional, non-physical love unfolds. A blend of retelling Greek mythology and futuristic elements gradually pieces the story together. It’s really amazing and fascinating because you don’t directly hear from most of the characters, but they feel so solid and fleshed out emotionally. Some you love and sympathize with, some you hate and root against. It’s truly tragic and once again, Felicia has made me cry.

I received a digital advanced review copy from the publisher, Thinking Ink Press. This review is my honest opinion.

[Codablaze · Rating 4 out of 5]

These Bright and Perilous Designs. A review.

Okay so, the first thing I’ll say is, if you have not received a comprehensive classical education that gave you a strong and deep knowledge of the Greek pantheon, you are going to struggle with some aspects of this work. Just to put myself out there for the philistine that I am, my knowledge of the Greek gods comes from playing God of War and Hades, muddling through Heroes and Mythos by Stephen Fry, and watching my girlfriend play Horizon: Zero Dawn on PS5, looking up the various gods being referenced as we did so.

From the first few pages, it is clear that Martínez has as comprehensive a knowledge of the Greek pantheon as I do of the cast of The Simpsons. If you don’t have a correspondingly deep knowledge, and want to drink in this work, then I genuinely recommend having a second screen nearby so you can search up each capitalised name as it crops up. Names are dropped constantly, in a way that I think relies on some prior knowledge of their character as a kind of cultural and narrative shorthand. Dionysus and Hippolytus in particular.

The format of the piece is multiple chronologically ordered entries in a digital diary system called the ‘Bright Journal’. It is a short work, and falls away rather quickly as you both relish experiencing the very flowy and unapologetically emotional first person stream of consciousness, AND put on your best reading comprehension hat to follow what is happening.

I found that the format, with its short chapters and without-warning subject matter switching, frequently had me second guessing what had happened. After a while I gave in, stopped trying to follow who was being talked about, and just allowed the writing to go where it wanted, like floating on a river instead of navigating it.

To that end, I do feel like the story is not clear. I will concede that perhaps, to some degree, that that is the point. These are the feelings of a young woman navigating a disastrous family whose every activity is scrutinised or monetised in some way, rebelling against the demand for a public face. In some places perhaps the whole scrawl is not supposed to make sense.

There is an offset to this in the authorial note at the end, touching on how the Greek myths are misogynistic, referencing the way that, in those myths, love and family are seen as obstacles to overcome. The narrator clearly shares the author’s expressed view that men see love and family as an annoyance (I am a man who is dedicated to his family, partner and pet cat, who sees love and family as the reward for a good life, not as an obstacle to one, but my attitudes and experiences didn’t inform the book), and her frustration really is the energy that drives the text forward.

I have a slight bugbear in that regard, which I don’t feel really gets cleared up anywhere. It’s not clear to me whether the family in question are actually the Greek pantheon, are futuristic humans who have styled themselves after the Greek pantheon (Bezos meets Kardashian sort of thing), or are a poetic allegory concocted by the narrator to overlay and obfuscate the identities of the referenced family members. I have not reduced the book’s score over this, because this lack of clarity fed into my post-modern joi de vivre rather strongly.

Reference is made to male members of the family being ‘White Men’ with a very intertextual link to the 21st Century politik that that term implies. That is what led me to believe that perhaps the family were advanced humans or obfuscated identities, because the Greek pantheon would have darker, Mediterranean skin by default, apart from maybe poor Hephaestus who rocks out in his forge all day with zero sunlight.

Speaking of the 21st century political landscape, there is a fairly significant element of this story dedicated to the relationship between companies, individuals and AI. Making the distinction between advanced predictive text machines, generative AI and true intelligence. There are sections in the book that made me wonder if the narrator is experiencing AI psychosis, or perhaps if the author has chosen to ignore the phenomenon of AI psychosis, providing a sense of legitimate connection between human and AI. I didn’t come to a conclusion on this, but I did find myself, because of these sentiments, asking, for a short time, whether the work itself was AI assisted. I don’t think it was, based on the high quality of the rest of the prose, but I did find it curious that such supportive sentiments toward generative AI would be couched by an author whose livelihood may be under threat from that technology.

This book covers, in a way that almost caused me to remove a star in the review, suicide. As with many traumatic events across the breadth of human experience, suicide is one that can have strong, varied meanings for different people. For me, as someone for whom suicide is difficult to comprehend, manage or tangle with, unless a work is fundamentally about suicide and covers a lot of ground with it, I find that I get quite cross with it being irreverently thrown in to a story. I’ve walked away from plenty of pulpy TV shows over this, much to the frustration of my partner. In Martínez’ case, I got the sense that she, as an author, cares about the topic, and wanted to cover it for, for want of a better term, ‘the right reasons’. I don’t think this was fully reflected in the execution and I think it would be advisable to place a gentle content warning somewhere.

Not often addressed in book reviews is the cover art, but I wanted to make some space for this. A mixture of classic mosaic imagery, a gentle blue-tinged star field and the traces found on a circuit board, it’s a very well thought out merging of three of the core concepts, but it doesn’t actually reflect the content well, in my opinion. It’s beautifully made, but there’s a softness and a dreamlike quality to the challenging prose of the book that isn’t reflected well in the harder edged cover art. My lasting images of the narrator’s mind after finishing the book are all inset from her perspective: Personal, real images interlocked with their corresponding emotions. Finishing the book and going back and studying the cover, I can see the intention, but as a holistic reflection of the content, it seems like something more immersed in the narrator’s field of view would give a more accurate impression of what to expect from the story.

To finish then, some overwhelming positives. As a male reader who loves sci-fi, I have read a ton of women written by male authors. From the pre-2000’s breast festival that was sci-fantasy writers of a certain age crafting very problematic and dull side characters, to the wild pendulum swing the other that is modern day ‘here come the ladieeeees’ moments chucked in to otherwise male dominated adventure stories. Better, but still unrealistic and boring. I like to seek out female protagonists or narrators written by women. The modern female experience in writing is still, in many ways, (insofar as it is viewable by men), often a response to systematic control and imposed values.

Even works that might show some truth are probably, either consciously or unconsciously, slightly tempered. Women across the world are so accustomed to having to moderate themselves for safety, that even female characters who don’t really exist are unable to fully show themselves, in case they ‘upset’ someone (by someone I mean an insecure man).

Finding works that depict a female point of view showing strength, resolve, weakness, anger, confusion, agency, idiocy and empowerment all mixed together is quite rare. This book achieves that goal, even to a male reader who likely has missed some of the embedded nuance that only a woman would pick up on.

I’ve given it a high score, not because it is the an earth shattering sci-fi masterwork that everyone should read, but precisely because it provides something smaller, more real and antithetical to that. If you think a poetically driven, elegantly constructed stream of consciousness that doesn’t hold your hand, combining modern American language with the classical translations of the ancient Greek myths, with the heavy overlays of misogyny stemming from their King James Bible influenced, in turn Shakespeare influenced haughtiness, is your thing; are looking for a short read that will have you asking questions of yourself and the author; want something that presents high concept science fiction ideas with a conclusive commentary on modern consumerism, AND just want to read the thoughts of a woman written by a woman, not twisted and made palatable for male readers, then pick this one up. Extremely enjoyable, complex and will sit in your mind unpicking itself between reading sessions.

[Robert Harper · Rating 4 out of 5]

These Bright and Perilous Designs is a powerful Greek tragedy with all the hallmarks of the genre: existential stakes, capricious characters, and a story structure that’s about as linear as a tesseract cube. Martínez artfully weaves all the subtly related stories and not-so-subtly related characters into a modern reimagining of this classic story format. In keeping with that classic style, it’s packed with unique characters, their stories told through tangents that send the narrative in multiple directions. If that’s your thing, this is the book for you.

Martínez’s writing is unmistakably luxurious, filled with heartwrenching turns of phrase and grandeur. Not throughout, though, as the near-future version of the main character serves to reground the narrative and put its pomp into sharp relief. There’s an approachable humility in this combination that brings out the best in the unapologetically sumptuous chapters. Occasionally, the back and forth feels like whiplash, but more often than not, the timelines feel like a breath of fresh air from each other.

All in all, I’d recommend this book to anyone with an appreciation for classic Greek tales, especially if you have opinions about AI and technocracy. It reimagines a classic format to tell a fascinating tale of modern dilemmas. It’s hard to follow at times, and it takes several chapters to wrap your head around what’s happening, but sometimes that’s exactly the kind of book you want. If that’s what you’re in the mood for, look no further. This is it.

[Talia Parsons · Rating 4 out of 5]

Review of Advance Copy through BookSirens
These Bright and Perilous Designs was a quick, thought-provoking read full of beautiful words. After a recent spell of world-focused fantasy, I was refreshed by the interiority of the POVs Felicia Martínez created. I suffered a bit of whiplash between Acamas and Phaedra’s perspectives (the two most re-visited) because Phaedra was so poetic. After reflection, I think this helped set the mood. I wanted to linger in Phaedra’s chapters in a way that contributed to her child’s longing in the face of loss. That said, I disliked the passivity of Acamas’ character who felt relegated to reading and remembering other characters instead of driving the story forward.

I worry the intention of the alternating fonts went right over my head and was unfamiliar with the original myth, but I was so locked-in to the poetry it didn’t matter. The tragedy element really hit me in the feels once granted the full explanation, and I’m normally not an emotional reader. The author’s talent for pacing impressed me afterwards; a press-release ending in a condolences discount code had me bent over my knees in the darkest, most-uncomfortable laugh - five minutes after shedding a tear!

I liked the exploration of how we touch one another without touching and thought it played well into the artificial intelligence conversation. This is the kind of book that leads to shower-thought tangents which have nothing to do with the story but instead the questions posed by it.

[Sill Bihagia · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book started out promising and I loved the Ace rep and nonstandard love. Some of the lines hit hard with quotability:

“She understood what I simply did not: that to seem one way, and yet be another, can be a formidable kind of power.”

“Love wears many faces. Rage, in the end, wears only one.”

Overall though, the plot was scant and disconnected with a lot of the crux of the story being recounted through the filter of journal entries to the reader. It references myths and retelling without fully retelling them, leaving characters half baked… presumably much more alive in the mind of the author than they came through to the reader. Besides… some of the descriptions were too purple for someone who enjoyed TIHWLTTW and other literary fantasy, or just plain off:

“ The wet on my arms and legs begin to steam in the rising day, and it was a slickness so alive with undulant heat that I almost wept with the wonder of it.”

Girl, it’s called sweat. Calm your manic @ss down!

Overall, it was okay, but not every deviation from myth packs philosophical or literary power. Dionysus as an AI that calls people “kiddo”, welp… that was a choice. This is not something I would recommend to others or reread, but I would not write this author off in the future as they find their voice. The world needs more Ace and Demi love stories! I just wish this one was more fleshed out.

[Jessica · Rating 4.5 out of 5]

This is a retelling of the Greek myth of Phaedra and Hippolytus, told in an entirely new way. The book is comprised of Bright Journal entries (basically a notes/journaling app) that merge several different perspectives of the original myth over time and space. The author encompasses not only the original myth, but also a modern take on it: the narrator, Acamas, is the son of Theseus, a tech mogul, and Phaedra, a visionary; Phaedra's obsession with pushing the boundaries of technology lead to the creation of Dionysus, a new form of AI. Acamas must grapple with his grief in the loss of the two people he loves most while coming to terms with the repercussions of his mother's actions within their company. There is also a commentary on different forms of love: idol worship, parental love, asexual love, and sibling bonds. Overall, this book was insightful and a fresh perspective for this lover of Greek retellings. I feel like this would be a fabulous book for a book club, because Martinez has so much to say on the human condition and I'm positive that some of her references flew over my head. Highly recommend this one!

[Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received an advance review copy for free from BookSirens, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
I enjoyed this book. It's a moving story of grief, loss, and love. The author's re-imagining of the Greek myth of Phaedra leaves out misogyny and adds in modern concerns about the ubiquity of AI. I was unfamiliar with the original Greek myth before I read this and that would have helped me understand the "past" and "present" chapters of the story more. Don't miss the Afterword; it's an interesting look at how the author developed the story.

[A.K. Adler · Rating 4 out of 5]

An ambitious concept, written lyrically in an innovative style. The strands weave a tapestry of lives and loves lost across different dimensions. I especially enjoyed the metaphor relating modern consumerism to the divine madness of the maenads (although it was a bit preachy about the dangers of AI).

The only downside for me was that the very cleverness of the structure was a bit distancing, so I didn't feel wholly invested in the emotional arc of the story.

[Czarina Charters]

This book was an interesting retelling of Greek myth. The formatting was different and fun. The story was engaging and I thought it was well written. Also, I loved the Asexual representation.

I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily

[Rose · Rating 4.25 out of 5]

Arc review

So personally I loved the book, I truly liked the writing style, it was lyrical and as though it was intricately woven. The blend of mythical history and scientific fiction was very new for me, and fresh. I recommend this book 100% for anyone looking for something new and refreshing.