LADIES: Retold Tales of Goddesses and Heroines...

LADIES: Retold Tales of Goddesses and Heroines by Boris and Doris Vallejo (A Roc Book: $18; 186 pp . , illustrated, paperback original). Doris Vallejo’s hilariously inept reworkings of classical myths read like rejected Harlequin Romances. In typically overwrought (and ungrammatical) style, Eurydice laments to Charon, “When I feel myself so hugely diminished that I seem no more than an amorphous blob, when my only motion is determined by the rock and sway of this boat, when my heart outraced itself in fright, when it broke in two and bled to racking death, how is it that it can still love, still grieve, still long for Orpheus?” Fantasy illustrator Boris Vallejo supplies drawings of overbuilt heroes--obviously copied from photographs of body-builders--and kitsch paintings that make Ariadne, Medea, Circe et al. look like refugees from a Playboy layout on aerobics instructors. The Vallejos’ talents complement each other--and insult their material.