This book was actually a lot more entertaining than I thought it was going to be. This story is around the legend of the siege of Troy. The story opens with a disagreement between Achilles and Agamemnon, after the siege had been going on for over a decade. Agamemnon had stolen a girl from Achilles that he had “rightfully” won in sacking a city. For this reason Achilles sits out on the fighting and watches as the Achaeans get their asses handed to them by the trojans. This book is full of chads and it reads somewhat like a marvel comic book story where you have 4 main levels of characters that make for some really interesting dynamics.

  • Zeus top dog, no one can go against his will, but he can be tricked.
  • Pantheon of gods, like Apollo, Athena, Hera, etc. They are immortal but all have their favorite mortals so they are always scheming to help one side or the other. They often take human form to look like someone’s uncle or distant relative and offer advice or actually get out on the field and crush some skulls.
  • Less powerful immortals that act as messengers and such but usually stay out of politics like Hermes and Iris.
  • Heroes, these are mortals that are most of the time descendants of gods. For this reason they usually have supernatural strength or some supernatural skill. The central Olympians in this story are Achilles who I can only now picture as sexy sexy brad pitt and Hector who is his rival from Troy.
  • Humans the rest of the population which are brave, but mostly cannon fodder. With all these dynamics I was really invested in the story for probably the first 75%. It is unbelievably violent, there are 240 deaths described in this book between named combatants. Towards the end it started to get a little long because all the elements had been played out a little, but still very entertaining. One of my favorite elements of the book is that everyone has little attributes that get added to their name and whenever someone great was referred to they would always use the full name. It was never just “Diomedes” it was always “Diomedes Breaker of Horses”. So even in the heat of combat the combatants would use the full name. Some of my favorites are
  • Diomedes master of the war-cry
  • Briseis of the sweet cheeks
  • Ino of the lovely ankles
  • Apollo who strikes from afar Entertaining read!