In one of the few (non-educational) podcasts I listen to, someone brought up the notion that stupid people shouldn’t read smart books because they will bring a stupid perspective on a smart subject. I had trouble reading and following this story, and I will admit that I was in remedial English until 7th grade, but in all honesty, it all came off as overly descriptive jibberish without any character development and little resolution.
warning: outdated spoiler
Do you like analogies about lions? Because there are a lot of analogies about how fighting in the war, emotions, and reactions are relatable to lions in the wild. It got old real quick. The language is outdated. I understand how old this book is (written in the 7th century BC) but it has no redeemable story arch. The Odyssey, though I haven’t read it since freshman year of high school, is still standard for the greatest tropes of storytelling to this day – The Hero Cycle. There is NONE OF THAT in the Iliad. There are over a hundred characters in the book. Two of them have any real explanation beyond their name and occupation. More than half of the book is combat. The other half is at least readable banter between Kings and the Gods. It has a sense of glory, ego, intensity to the language that can at times grasp the reader nearly three thousand years later.
From what I gathered Helen was stolen by Paris, a Trojan, and started a ten-year war between the Greeks and the Trojans. On the Greek side is Agamemnon, Achilles, and Odysseus. On the Trojan side, there is…Hector and Paris. Paris is a little bitch. He is too afraid to fight and own up to what he caused. He is mentioned in two maybe three chapters where all he is doing is hiding in his chambers. Helen speaks maybe three lines of dialogue in the whole book – once at the end for some weak sense of a conclusion. Odysseus doesn’t do anything cool worth remembering, and neither does Agamemnon. A guy whose name starts with a P gets killed and Achillies freaks out and starts murdering everybody including Hector and that is pretty much it. It really isn’t a story-driven story. It is descriptive and has some morals that are beautiful. I don’t know if I didn’t start paying attention until the final few chapters…if it all started to flow through me and make sense, but literally, the last five chapters are the only time when I felt like anything concreate was occurring – the rest was just gratuitous fighting. It was hard to keep straight which gods preferred which side but Achilles mother Thetis, wife of Zeus, loves her baby boy and through her aid, she varnishes a shield that protects him that is pretty badass.
The structure of the story goes from big to small. At first, it is about the two sides and boils down to the conflict of two men, Achilles and Hector so there is some rising action. It is a good book if you love reading for the sake of reading. You may walk away with a new lesson, and at times the writing is poetic and enjoyable but the worst part about it is that it just abruptly ends. We all know the story of the Trojan Horse but I kinda expected to read about it in the story that is known for the war where the Trojan Horse occurred. Nope. It ends somewhere in the middle of the war without the famous story. It was like going to a place famous for its hot dogs and ordering a burger…it might be good, but not as good as what it is known for.
70/100
Ben Bonkoske 