I have always been a fan of Greek Mythology, but to be honest, even as a teacher The Iliad and The Odyssey can be hard to get through. I was so excited when I saw this graphic novel by Gareth Hinds on Netgalley!

Hinds does a wonderful job taking the original story of The Iliad and making it a lot easier to understand. The story isn't as scary or as time consuming. The illustrations were beautiful as well.

I can't wait to pick up a finished copy when it comes out. I also plan on buying Hinds version of The Odyssey. Both will look great on my shelf at school, and I know my students will want to read them!

The Iliad graphic novel by Gareth Hinds is a good way for people to discover the story of the Iliad without having to read the original (which can be quite a challenge... I've never actually done it myself). The pictures help bring the story to life in a way that simple text cannot.

That being said, even in graphic novel form, this can be a difficult book. There are a ton of characters in this book. All of the gods are battling, there are several heroes on each side to keep track of, and there are many place names that are being thrown around that can also be difficult to keep straight. After reading through the book once, I have to ask myself "do I even know the Iliad well?"

The original Iliad is a classic, and as far as I know, the graphic novel is fairly faithful to it. The pictures are good, but a little busy at times (partly because there are so many epic battle scenes in the story). I recommend this book to people that are interested in the content of the Iliad, but are a little intimidated by the original text.

One note on formatting: as far as I know, this book won't be available in a Kindle edition, but if the publisher does decide to release it on Kindle, there is still a lot of formatting work that would need to be done. I read the first part of this book on my Kindle (my preferred electronic reading format) and it was really difficult to read because the text didn't match up to the pictures. When I switched over to a PDF format, it read fine though.

This is a wonderful adaptation of the Iliad in graphic novel form. There is clearly a lot to fit in but the author does a great job of focussing on the important aspects of the story. Though most of us are familiar with the tale, many of us find it intimidating or unwilling to tackle the original translation (myself included). This is a great alternative! Maybe it will even inspire you to read the original translated epic (I'm certainly considering it!).

Well this was... interesting? it's the Illiad and I love the Illiad as well as the Oddysey, however I just thought it would be an actual graphic novel in which it was not, so... i'm slightly disappointed by that.

Also quite put off by the bible looking art.

This graphic novel took longer to get through, but I should have expected it, seeing as the Iliad is a lengthy story. The illustrations were vivid and well-drawn, but it wasn’t a style I was very fond of. I also had some difficulty getting into the story. It was however still an enjoyable read! It’s for anyone who wants to read a condensed version of the Iliad and likes a more visual experience. I also think this is great for younger readers who love reading adult themed books. This is a valuable book and will make a fantastic addition to a graphic novel collection!

I was not able to read this as the words were on one page and the pictures on another most of the time, but also because the sentences were mixed together. A real shame as I was very excited to read this.

Thank you, NetGalley for the preview of this graphic novel.

The Iliad by Gareth Hinds is a graphic novel that stays faithful to Homer's classic. But the panels were too small and the pages filled with more information than it could hold, making it a difficult read.

I feel like if you liked reading the Iliad, or texts like that, then you'll definitely at least enjoy reading this version of it. Even if you don't know too much about these type of things, everything is explained while you're reading and there's also an index at the end, so you'll definitely make sense of things. That being said, I suggest picking up a physical version of this book because I feel like it'd be better for your reading enjoyment that a digital copy.

I had purchased Gareth Hinds' rendering of The Odyssey as a graphic novel for my 8th grader as a companion for their class hero unit and am thrilled to have the opportunity to review The Iliad (I also have his Poe collection). It is a fabulous adaptation, and both the illustrations and text itself make reading The Iliad lots more exciting. As a teacher I definitely would pull sections to share with my students to supplement this unit. Graphic novels are an amazing tool to reach reluctant readers and stimulate the imaginations of every type of reader. Thank you to #NetGalley for the opportunity to preview #TheIliad by Gareth Hinds - I definitely will be picking up a paper copy for my students to enjoy in my classsroom.

Homer's Iliad and Odyssey are long-time favourites of mine, and I have read many interpretations and adaptations of the story over the years. To see it depicted in graphic novel form was not something I'd even considered, but now that I have read this, I'm going to be looking for other such well-loved stories retold in this form. It's quite something to see such a complex epic rendered with such simplicity and the illustrations are quite detailed too. Incorporating each warrior's initial into their characters' armour was a really good idea, and it helped to easily differentiate the Greeks and Trojans. Coming to the story itself, I was impressed with the amount of detail the author has managed to work into a graphic novel. The role of the gods in particular was very well portrayed, depicting how far they influenced the events of the war.
The only downside of this was the format of the copy provided. I had to enlarge it to be able to read the text, but this made the panels a little grainy and hard to decipher. Regardless, I really enjoyed reading my first graphic novel in a very long time and I can definitely see myself reading The Odyssey in a similar format.

Well written, accurate, faithful to the original. Unfprtunately, I actively disliked the art. I'm sure others will love it, though.

This is a retelling of The Iliad in form of a graphic novel. The author Gareth Hinds brings us once again to one of the most famous battles of all time. There is no need for me to summarise this graphic novel since the story is so well-known and well-loved.

I immensely enjoyed the maps and the charts. They were very helpful in bringing the story closer to me. Also, the chart with all the characters at the beginning was incredible, it made it easy to visualise everything. I love how it was similar to a list of characters in a play! 

The art was quite lovely. I really enjoyed it, above all else because it was so different from the other graphic novels I've read in the past. My only complain is that it appeared a bit grainy, but that must have been a problem with my e-arc. 

However, all those things could not cloud the fact that I simply did not enjoy this graphic novel. I am actually a big fan od the Iliad and Achilles is one of my favorite characters in greek mythology, but I simply couldn't get into this novel.

I received this book in exchange for an honest review.

Gareth Hinds makes a lot of good decisions in his graphic version of Homer’s The Iliad, both in terms of art and narration, resulting in a book that’s easy to recommend both to young adults and also educators/parents who want to slip a little classical knowledge into their kid’s comic book.

Two of those good decisions involve cleverly incorporating each major hero’s initial into their helm or breastplate and ignoring the historical reality and portray the two sides in uniform garb so as to more easily distinguish one from the other. Given the number of characters, and an avalanche of names, anything that helps to separate Greeks from Trojans and tell Achilles from Agamemnon is a boon to the reader. The art is clear and vivid throughout, working hand in hand with the text to clarify, expand, emphasize, and enhance. It’s all well done, but my favorite moments generally are the evening and night scenes, which he casts in a serene color palette that often matches the emotional tone of the scenes.

The story mostly moves along quickly thanks to Hinds’ choices of what to cut, which is a lot but the core story is here, and he does fill other missing storylines in the addendums. Sometimes the list of deaths can slow things down, basically a catalog of names one after the other, but as he nicely explains in the afterword, he’s simply emulating in abridged fashion Homer’s catalogs, which are there for a reason: that the deaths are given a face, a name, so we mourn a life and not just shrug at another faceless soldier (as the line goes, a thousand deaths is a statistic, a single death is a tragedy). The story, as with the original, does a nice job of capturing both the glorification of battle in a warrior culture and its butchery/horrific toll. Blood spurts, turns the river red, stains the soil. Hinds’ prose style is clear and simple, with a solid rhythm in many places, and is at its best I’d say in the longer passages, which are often lyrical or weighted with emotion. As when he describes the truce to allow the sides to bury those killed that day: “With pails they washed the bloody filth away, and then hot tears fell as into waiting carts they lifted up their dead.” Or when he describes the Trojan camps encircling the Greeks: “There are nights when the upper air is windless, the sky so clear that every star shows bright in the firmament . . . As numerous as were the Trojan fires upon the plain — a thousand fires, with fifty men around each blaze and firelight glinting from their polished war-gear.”

Hinds bookmarks the major story with a prologue and some addendums (maps, character lists, a pantheon graphic, detailed notes on particular scenes) so as to provide some context as to what leads to the war and what follows after Homer’s closing scene (for instance, the Trojan Horse), as well as to flesh out the story a bit more by noting what he’s omitted in a given scene. He also offers up a bibliography noting the translations he used, as well as other resources.

Between Hinds work here and on The Odyssey and George O’Connor’s series of books on the Greek gods, it’s a golden age of graphic retelling of classical Greek myths and both their works are highly recommended for young readers coming to them for the first time, older readers looking to refresh their memories, and parents, educators, and librarians. They’re pretty much must-haves for any home with children.

This is a triumph of graphic adaption. Hinds' historically realistic art takes readers right into the midst of the Trojan War, leading to a wonderfully immerse reading experience. Meanwhile, his layout and generous supply of maps, character guides, and author's notes makes a hearty barrier against the confusion that can easily swamp anyone trying to work their way through a translation of Greek epic poetry. There's no doubt about it - thanks to Gareth Hinds and his skilled work, "The Illiad" has been made masterfully accessible for a new generation.

This was really enjoyable and a fun way to read the Iliad without actually reading the Iliad. I was pleasantly surprised how much they chose to include from the original text, like how involved the gods were. It sticks very closely to the original story so as an adaptation it is very well done.
The art was nice, I liked the decision to have it done in water colors and while it never turned away from showing violence inherent in an epic war story it was never too much or gory. The emotions and themes were captured in the art but sometimes the faces got a bit...unsettling (think hyper realistic wax sculptures) I wish the art was a bit more stylized. Hinds managed to capture the grandeur of the Iliad which is a great accomplishment.
I highly recommend if you enjoy the Iliad and want to experience it in a more visual form or if you were interested in the Iliad (but like me) was not interested in reading 600+ pages of war. Even in this form, the scenes got a bit repetitive and I got confused by the dozens of characters you needed to keep track of (but that is more the fault of the original story and not Hinds who did a very good job)

Hinds retelling of The Odyssey was overall amazing, and I imagine this will also be wonderful. However the pages and dialogue were not easy for me to follow with the netball version; the images/panels were too small to view them impressively and the dialogue never said who was speaking, just flowed from one character to the next.

3.5
I've read The Iliad twice before, the classic edition and a modern edition, and I generally love the old tales of Homer. They show a lot of humanity, both good and bad, and it's intriguing to watch the gods pick a side and help their favorites reach glory. It was really cool to get a well-known story visualized in a graphic novel and the artwork fits the content well - a little rough but dynamic and detailed. I did have some trouble staying entertained halfway through since there was a big middle chunk of the story that was basically just images of fighting scenes with some pretty flat commentary like "Hector threw his spear at this guy", "Achilles killed that guy" etc. Overall, I loved the visualization of this epic classic and the details were great but I feel like the fighting scenes could have been narrowed down to fewer pages, it lowered the entertainment level a bit.

I've always <i>loved</i> the story of Troy and the great battle that happened there and resultingly have read and watched my way through quite a number of renditions. I definitely have my favorites, and this graphic novel <i>The Iliad</i> by Gareth Hinds is one that I deeply enjoyed. It's really quite a lot of fun to read this story in a way that gives you a great visual of the characters and what is going on with each of them within the course of the battle. The inclusion of the gods and their roles in the battles, especially in the images, was something I found quite fun to see, especially when the story went aside during the repetitiveness of battle to instead focus on the events and goings ons with Zeus and the other residents of Olympus.

This novel lives up to the name of graphic for there is quite a bit of blood and death portrayed--which makes sense as it is telling the story of a war--however, it was all done tastefully and never once became too much for me to handle. I deeply appreciated this about the novel, especially after having read one prior that ended up being far too graphic for my tastes. It is possible to depict horrible and terrifying events without portraying it in a deeply nauseating manner.

Each time I read this story I find myself feeling sad for Troy, joining the characters in their mourning of loved ones, particularly the character Hector. I was truly able to connect with the story, enjoy and despair at various pieces. Admittedly, I do find that it is somewhat difficult to care about all of them as many characters are mentioned quickly in name and while you understand, to a degree, their import a number of them are characters that quickly enter and leave your awareness.

I definitely picture myself reading the second portion of this story as I was definitely a little disappointed not to have had the opportunity to read the whole thing, though I did know that this would only be a portion. The most important characters were easily recognizable and a welcome sight of nostalgia as I read. I'm looking forward to seeing the next book.

<i>I received a free copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. </i>

I thoroughly enjoyed reading the Illiad as a graphic novel. Although one of the oldest texts it's still relevant today.
I can recommend this to anyone, especially if you are a bit hesitant to read through the original text. The art only enriches the experience.

Thank you Netgalley for providing me with a copy.

I liked this graphic novel enough, but I still prefer the original epic book, but if it takes a graphic novel to spread the Iliad, it is ok and I hope a lot of people would read this great story!