"Zeus sighed heavily. 'I wish, all those years ago, Prometheus hadn’t persuaded me to make mankind,' he said. 'I knew it was a mistake.'"

Wow. What a chilling and melodramatic tale about the sacrifice of war. I'm super impressed with what Stephen Fry has accomplished here (as with all of his other books in this series), but to tell The Iliad in such a comprehensive way?? How many sources would he have had to club together in order to do this? 😭

This is undoubtedly my favourite so far of his Greek Myths series. It's the first chronology he's done and there's definitely a difference when you can emotionally invest in the same characters and follow their journey, while the gods and heroes we learned about in previous books serve as spectators or the background. I found myself crying toward the end (perhaps a lingering effect of TSOA, perhaps not). I truly feel for the plight of all these characters, most especially the women. I see once again why Homer still sweeps people off their feet.

And no, Paris was definitely not a "good" boy. Though, I suppose we can't exactly trace this war to one precise "origin". Was it Eris? Was it Helen? Was it Odysseus? I suppose the whole point was that it was an amalgamation of heedless pride, greed and wilful ignorance. All in all, the folly of men (and gods) in a glaring, 4K display.

“It is the intriguing distance, the blend of history, mystery, and myth, the interplay of the particular and the universal that makes the Homeric experience so rich and compelling. The action is played out on the golden horizon between reality and legend, the beguiling penumbra where fable and fact coexist.”

Mankind will always be fascinated by stories of war. It's such an ugly part of our nature that most of us don't want to fully acknowledge. Though we'd flinch in horror now to think of debasing another human with such violence and cruelty, we're also. capable of doing the most heinous things when given the time and place. I think Fry explored this with adequate grace and compassion, for us the reader and for the tragic characters. Well-explored war stories are my favourite sort of tale for this reason. Even though it makes me immensely sad, it also gives me hope for a better world. In understanding the human condition deeper, I also confront parts of myself that I may have been unwilling to face.

I think Homer's two epics as "stories of humanity" can be summarised as such: The Iliad is about war, lustful greed, and the primal rage within all of us; and the Odyssey is about coming home and the search for a place of belonging. The fact that these stories still echo so strongly after thousands of years leads me to believe that these themes are some of the most loved in humanity. It certainly is for me.

I can't wait to dive back into the Odyssey (idc idc, I still have such a soft spot for my Ithacan family trio), but first… perhaps a revisit to The Song of Achilles 🥲 for old time's sake and to just... cry lol.

Aug 18th, 2026 ⭐️ - 4/5

I’m still an utter sucker for Percy Jackson and Rick Riordan 🙂‍↕️ I can’t count the number of times I’ve laughed throughout this book. I’d thought it might be too juvenile for me now, but evidently not! And that’s great! I hope I never grow out of Uncle Rick’s books <3 Lowkey this made some stories a bit more understandable for me compared to Stephen Fry’s one (I think that one just threw me off with the amount of unpronounciable names). The audiobook was also fantastic. Jesse Bernstein puts me into Percy’s headspace immediately. I’m so glad he’s the one narrating all of his POVs!