This retelling of the story of the Trojan War is a sequel to Fry's Mythos and Heroes, both of which I adored. It preserves Fry's inimitable style of making his characters thoroughly modern yet telling the story traditionally. There are some delicious moments of humour.
But the first third of the book, in which Fry attempts to make sense of a hugely complex back story, is very difficult. Only occasionally does a character come to life. As soon as we reach the final year of the war, and the Homeric story and beyond, the story becomes vivid and absorbing. Homer, of course, could assume that his listeners understood the back story; Fry can't. But I did wonder whether the origins of Paris, cast away on the hillside, and the birth of Helen from an egg hatched by her mother who had coupled with Zeus in the form of a swan, and the origins of the House of Atreides would have been better done as footnotes as the action was progressing. Either that, or do it like George Martin and turn the story into a whole series of books.
Nevertheless, Fry's erudition is displayed as is his enormous wit.
Selected quotes: (page references from the Penguin paperback edition)
- "They say a fool and his gold are soon parted, but they ought to say too that those who refuse ever to be parted from gold are the greatest fools of all." (p 11)
- "The moment when flowers and fruits are at their fullest and ripest is the moment that precedes their fall, their decay, their rot, their death." (p 44)
- "As Luck would have it - Luck? No, Faith, Providence, Destiny ... Doom, perhaps, but not Luck, certainly not Luck." (p 53)
- "Antenor was a seasoned courtier. Courtiers do not survive long enough to be seasoned unless they maintain an efficient network of spies and informers." (p 166)
November 2022; 352 pages
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