
The gods most central to the story are Ungit, a goddess who corresponds to Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, but in Glome is represented by a rugged black stone and is essentially cruel and her son, the god of the Grey Mountain, who lives on a mountain near Glome. In her old age, Orual writes Part I to lay out all of the wrongs that the gods have done to her, hoping that a traveler will bring the book to the Greeklands, where she thinks their people’s wisdom might find some answer to her questions about the gods. The narrator is Orual, a princess who eventually becomes the Queen of Glome when her father, the King, dies.

The novel takes place in the fantastical kingdom of Glome, situated in a world that also includes a country called the Greeklands, modeled after ancient Greece.
