Title Troy Series --- Author Adèle Geras Cover Art Erich Lessing Publisher Harcourt - 2002 First Printing Scholastic - 2000 Category Mythology Warnings None Main Characters Xanthe, Marpessa, Alastor, Iason, Polyxena Main Elements Gods

The Siege of Troy has lasted almost ten years.

Inside the walled city food is scarce and death is common. From the heights of Mount Olympus the Gods keep watch.

But Aphrodite, Goddess of Love, is bored with the endless, dreary war so she turns her attention to two sisters: Marpessa, who serves as handmaiden to Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world; and Xanthe, who tends the wounded soldiers in the Blood Room. When Eros fits an arrow to his silver-lit bow and lets it fly, neither sister will escape its power.

I have now read not only the original by Homer, but several other version about the war of Troy, including the Song of Achilles by Miller and The Song of Troy by McCullough. Thus I was looking forward to yet another take on this classic tale.

My first reaction was that the writing style didn't stand up to the other two, Miller in particular was one of the most beautiful books I've read, this one the sentences felt a bit short a choppy and simplistic. Though I otherwise could find no reason to think this book is intended to be YA (yes many of the main characters and teenagers but then that's true of the original, Achilles was probably a teen when it all started), and teenage girls in ancient Greek times were nearly adult and were considered marriagable. But perhaps the writing was aimed at them.

Anyway, I had to work a bit to get through it. Now, it was interesting to see the tale retold through the eyes of non-participant characters. Meaning they were all grooms and nurses and servants and cooks. We got to see what it was like inside for Troy for the regular people, the ones who basically went about their daily lives caring for children or shopping in the market or cleaning rooms, only taking some breaks now and then to watch the action from the walls. For some, more than half their lives had been spent in a state of war, knowing little else than gazing out at the Greeks camped out along the shore.

But because they are on the inside of the walls, it is hard to tell the tale of the war itself, so we get two weird occurrences. First, though the battle was taking place some distance away, it seems everyone had eagle eyes and could pick out individual combattants without difficulty, describing the events so that we as the reader know what is going on in the battle. Likely when you have something like twenty thousand people in a fight, you'd see little more than a giant cloud of dust. The second, the gods keep popping up randomly, explaining either what just happened, or what will happen shortly, to whatever of our protagonists are convenient...and then conveniently our protagonist completely forgets the entire encounter. It made sense, they are gods after all, and we shouldn't remember them walking amongst us, but then it becomes clear they are only present for the purpose of relaying information to the reader. Since we aren't witnessing the battle one has to tell and not show, and it came off a bit oddly.

I found myself mainly getting bored. Yes, it is probably partly because I have read a handful of version of the fall of Troy within a period of just nine months, but also because there are much better retellings out there. We do get to see more of Helen, and Paris and Hector of course, but then McCullough's The Song of Troy made them her protagonists, unlike here where they are still seen through the eyes of a third party.

And of course the multiple love triangles were more annoying than anything. Everyone loves someone but that someone loved someone else in a weird kind of loop.

I think under other conditions I would have liked it more, but now that I'm aware of much better retellings, I will remember this one as being unique in the choice of characters, but not in the quality of the story itself.