So the main interest of the book (and its selling point, carefully highlighted in the blurbs) lies in the contradiction between the feminist ideals of equality and independence in relationships

I've been hacked, dismembered, or otherwise murderated by a huge Minotaur alongside several of my closest secret-life friends and a snotty brat of a model (don't mind her).

to bind an apprentice  bound out to service

If there was sufficient interest, the Athenians could vote once per year to ostracize someone, exiling him from Athens for a period of 10 years. To vote, Athenians scratched the name of the person to be ostracized on potsherds, broken pottery pieces called ostraka—hence the name of the procedure.