*A big thank-you to Stephen Fry, Chronicle Books, and NetGalley for arc in exchange for my honest review.*
A terrific read that enabled me to return to the moments of my classicial education. A sheer pleasure!

Thank you to Netgalley, Chronicle Books and Stephen Fry for this ARC in return of my honest review. Having loved Mythos and Heroes, I was delighted to get my hands on this final part of the trilogy. Told with Stephen's typical wit and charm, I adored this book, Stephen's storytelling is gorgeous!

I love reading about mythology and this book was an interesting deep look on the subject. It was well written with a unique voice that reflects the author’s personality and makes the topic even more fun to read. I will definitely be checking about his past works and keeping an eye out for this book. It’s a great read and I recommend all who love mythology check it out.

i have always been a big fan of greek mythology since i was a kid and i basically inhaled everything that has contents of it, and this one !!! i loved it! really, this author brings more greek contents everytime and i end up wanting more! would recommend this to my greek nerds because they need to read this !

Since I was young, I've held a deep interest in mythology from all around the world. As a result, I've read a sizable number of retellings of the Greek myths in particular. So much so, that for the past few years I felt as if there was nothing more to them to possibly interest me. That however all changed when I purchased Stephen Fry’s “Mythos” on a bit of a whim, thinking that it might make for some decent light reading.

Well, that turned out to be quite the underestimation. Suddenly my interest was being rekindled all over again, thanks to Fry’s simple yet elegant storytelling style infused heavily with his witty commentary, and also his bountiful and helpfully informative footnotes and appendices. I quickly devoured “Mythos,” and then went on to do the same with “Heroes,” and soon I found myself waiting impatiently for another retelling from Fry.

To say the least, when I was able to get a hold of “Troy,” was in many ways the same as his first two forays into Greek myth, all of course in the best way possible. There was that same clear storytelling story, that same humor and wit liberally peppering the narrative, and a very welcome abundance of footnotes and clarifying explanations. The only major difference was whereas I had read tales of the Greek gods and heroes numerous times before, I have never fully read any major comprehensive telling of the Trojan War. What I’ve read in the past are mainly truncated summarizations that frankly left me a bit bored in comparison to all the earlier mythology. Frankly, it wasn’t until I read Natalie Hayne’s “A Thousand Ships” that I actually read a telling of the war that I actually enjoyed, which I did so immensely. However, even that felt it was targeted more towards readers who had a greater familiarity with the story of the Trojan War than what I had personally read beforehand. Finally though, with Fry’s “Troy” I feel like I was finally able to experience a full retelling that was not only detailed, but fantastically accessible, understandable, and of course quite entertaining.

Stephen Fry has done it once again with the latest addition to his contemporary mythological retellings - and it is my great hope that he continues to do so, whether it’s further forays into Greek myth (in that case, I anticipate his take on Homer’s Odyssey), or into the rich mythologies of other cultures and peoples.

thanks to netgalley and the publisher for providing me with the digital arc of this book. i found it so interesting. loved reading this!!

"Troy" is a great retelling of the myths surrounding the Trojan war. I loved the humor in this book and hope to see a similar retelling of Odyssee soon.

Stephen Fry has such a unique way when it comes to historical books. If you've enjoyed his other titles, this is another must read!

This is a must read if you like learning more about this history. I loved his books and this one didn’t disappoint!

The third volume of Fry’s GREEK MYTHS series covers the events that led to the founding, the siege, and the ultimate fall of Troy, drawing mostly from Homer’s ILIAD, but other sources as well. It is an accessible, captivating and surprisingly complete (if sometimes rushed) retelling of our greatest epic story, told with Fry’s usual and palpable passion for Greek Mythology, albeit noticeably less wit than the previous installments—I guess that a tragic, decade-long war doesn’t provide too much comedic material.

The thing about Fry is that he knows his stuff and likes to give a full picture, but he also knows his audience. The first part consists of dense genealogical/dynastical context, and he warns the reader time and time again not to worry, the most important parts of this information dump will find a way to stick… but just in case they don’t, the glossary and index of the book make up almost half of it! The exposition may take some resolve to battle through, but after that, Fry is a charming guide who mostly manages to strike a great balance between tangents and simply telling the story we came for. I had my qualms with the footnotes in HEROES, but in TROY, they are almost back their MYTHOS glory: they are sparse, pertinent, and occasionally offer insight into etymology and idioms, my personal favorites!

It turns out that just like the ones featured in HEROES, the Achaean and Trojan heroes in this story have generous helpings of petty and ignoble qualities as well. The long and epic story of Troy involves a vast cast of characters that are often hard to keep apart, but Fry does a great job at turning the main players into well-rounded, three-dimensional characters that will have you root for either side at different points in the story. Indeed, the strongest parts of the book are not the straight-up retellings of Homer, but the beginning and end, in which Fry had to do some impressive patch-work in order to let us in on what happened before and after the events covered by the ILIAD—and yet it reads like a neat, consistent narrative, which is a praiseworthy accomplishment! I also found the two-part Appendix, which goes into the historical VS mythological evidence of both Troy and Homer himself, to be particularly fascinating; it adds another dimension to the tangle of myth, history, and literature that makes up the story of Troy.

I hope Fry will continue his series. If he does, I assume that the next volume will cover the ODYSSEY—I was positively obsessed with Odysseus’ return to Ithaca as a child, so I wouldn’t be surprised if that turned out to be my favorite. And of course, Agamemnon’s and Aeneas’ return journeys after the Fall of Troy would provide even more material…