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"We achieve immortality not through ambrosia and ichor but through history and reputation. Through statues and epic song."

The third volume of Fry’s Great Mythology series covers the events that led to the founding, the siege, and the ultimate fall of Troy, drawing mostly from Homer’s Iliad, but other sources as well. It is an accessible, captivating and surprisingly complete (if sometimes rushed) retelling of our greatest epic story, told with Fry’s usual and palpable passion for Greek Mythology, albeit noticeably less wit than the previous installments—I guess that a tragic, decade-long war doesn’t provide too much comedic material.

The thing about Fry is that he knows his stuff and likes to give a full picture, but he also knows his audience. The first part consists of dense genealogical/dynastical context, and he warns the reader time and time again not to worry, the most important parts of this information dump will find a way to stick� but just in case they don’t, the glossary and index of the book make up almost half of it! The exposition may take some resolve to battle through, but after that, Fry is a charming guide who mostly manages to strike a great balance between tangents and simply telling the story we came for. I had my qualms with the footnotes in Heroes, but in Troy, they are almost back their Mythos glory: they are sparse, pertinent, and occasionally offer insight into etymology and idioms, my personal favorites!

It turns out that just like the ones featured in Heroes, the Achaean and Trojan heroes in this story have generous helpings of petty and ignoble qualities as well. The long and epic story of Troy involves a vast cast of characters that are often hard to keep apart, but Fry does a great job at turning the main players into well-rounded, three-dimensional characters that will have you root for either side at different points in the story. Indeed, the strongest parts of the book are not the straight-up retellings of Homer, but the beginning and end, in which Fry had to do some impressive patch-work in order to let us in on what happened before and after the events covered by the Iliad—and yet it reads like a neat, consistent narrative, which is a praiseworthy accomplishment! I also found the two-part Appendix, which goes into the historical VS mythological evidence of both Troy and Homer himself, to be particularly fascinating; it adds another dimension to the tangle of myth, history, and literature that makes up the story of Troy.

I hope Fry will continue his series. If he does, I assume that the next volume will cover the Odyssey—I was positively obsessed with Odysseus� return to Ithaca as a child, so I wouldn’t be surprised if that turned out to be my favorite. And of course, Agamemnon’s and Aeneas� return journeys after the Fall of Troy would provide even more material�

—â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä”â¶Ä�

My reviews of Stephen Fry's Greek Myths series:

01: Mythos · ★★★★
02: Heroes · ★★�
03: Troy · ★★★★
04: Odyssey · ★★★★