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Above: Actor, Author, Comedian, Classicist, Director, Editor, Journalist, Public-Speaker, Voice-Actor, Wilde enthusiast, Doyle enthusiast; Honorary-Fellow of Queen's College Cambridge and Cardiff University, former Rector of the University of Dundee; gentleman, and charmer, Stephen Fry


While Fry's retellings expectedly [and it seems self-admittedly] does not live up to the poetic grandeur of Homer, while of course not his only source, it makes up the bulk of this work. Even in his first appendix upon the literary legacy of The Iliad, he notes how every literary work will inevitably be compared to it, so I don't think my present thoughts upon this adaption—and literary appreciation—are out of place.

I appreciate Fry's attempts to give a full retelling of the story of Troy, not Homer's Achillean-centric character-arc, penultimate to the war—but he doesn't give sources for each of these traced genealogies and individual stories of many of the central characters and their forebears, frustratingly. For certain point of contension (or adaption through antiquity) he will give a multitude of sources in a single broad footnote, pointing me towards various sources to continue my reading of Greek-myth, and the Troy cycle in particular, which is much appreciated.
While i understand fully these are meant to be contemporary adaptions, it suffers slightly in being both an appreciation and a retelling—and the fluidity between such different forms of concentration becomes better and less jarring as the text runs on.

As I stated previously, Fry does not (and much like any poet or prose writer [unless in translation] frankly cannot) capture the beauty, rhythm and depth of Homer, and even Virgil's, texts—but, he does capture that vital energy that empowers much of the combat of the Iliad, and the wooden-horse episode frankly had my blood rushing and my hairs on end in a way Virgil's Aeneid (Book-Two) couldn't, as well as Odysseus and Diomedes' sneaking into Troy to steal the Palladium.
I had some gripes with some of my favourite episodes being left out, for example the meeting of Glaucus and Diomedes, and some moments left without their emotional fervour from the often underwhelming simplicity of style, such as the dialogue between Andromache and Hector in Iliad Book-Six.
At times characters can feel like caricatures, so emotional points feel dry: Achilles in particular aroused little sympathy upon Patroclus' death, and his own death roused practically nothing from me; Priam, while a very well written character, was not like his Iliad counterpart and I couldn't feel that harrowing sorrow he felt at the death of Hector—admittedly the Iliad Book-Twenty-Four recreation of the two aforementioned's momentary bond was impressive and evocative in its simplicity on Fry's behalf.
Odysseus was seemingly Fry's favourite, having the most developed character [perhaps lended to Fry's pen by the depth of the Odyssey in reading] and essentially being the protagonist after the death of Achilles [again, perhaps using Odysseus' own account of the siege on Troy as a basis, opposed to Virigl's Aeneas' own]. Ajax (the Greater) and Diomedes are depicted very effectively; Agamemnon is the perfect grumbling egoist, and his chemistry with Calchas is very humorous. Fry's sense of humour is not restrained even for an adaption of works of this calibre, and I admire it... though I wish he had written his own spin on the couple of childish episodes Homer depicts of Greek warriors falling face first into manure.

He leaves the fate of the Greek heroes after their atrocities in Troy as a cliff-hanger of sorts, leading me to believe this 'Trilogy' will not be the last of Mr. Fry's mythical aspirations... perhaps a volume of all of their unfortunate fortunes adapted from various plays and epics?... or a more expansive series of slim volumes covering the major characters in turn? I very much hope this is the case.

While so far my critique may seem perhaps negative, it is strictly in comparison to Homer where it is personal, and objective in light of the occasionally confused style—perhaps the appreciative cataloguic style of Mythos and Heroes (which I have not read) simply couldn't lend itself to the retelling of such a narrative-ly cohesive tale like this.

Regardless, I believe this retelling is a great read, detached from its classical sources as a point of reference for judgement, and will hopefully initiate many new adult and child readers (and non-readers) alike into the world of the Homeric and post-Homeric classics.
Stephen Fry's personality radiates from this text, and his charm is like no other.
7.5/10

Below: Raphael's detail of Dante, Homer and Virgil on The Parnassus fresco.