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Review at MyShelf.Com | ||||||||||||||
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by David Gemmell David Gemmell, UK master of heroic fantasy turns to the very thing that the genre grew out of - mythology. In this case, the huge topic of the Trojan War. It is an ideal vehicle for his epic style, dealing as it does with superhuman people and high deeds of bravery. Helikaon (aka Aeneas) sails forth to Troy on his new ship, the one they said would sink. He carries with him many heroes, and heroes-to-be as well as the ship's inventor Khalkeus, his best friend, the gigantic Zidantas, and a young lad. Stopping at Bad Luck Bay, he meets the fiery Andromache, en route to marry Hektor in Troy, and meet Odysseus, king, hero and storyteller. In Troy, he finds a city of gold, but also of bitter rivalries and destructive treachery, a despotic ruler and his many disgruntled children as well as the invading Mykenes... ...With this sort of thing it is true that "It ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it". Many of us already know the story, but there is something about a story this big, and this ancient that demands to be told again and again. Gemmell is certainly one of the people to do it, and he does it with plenty of verve and freshness. We see the story with new eyes and feel a bit as though we are sitting around a storyteller's fire at some unspecified point in the distant past. To its detriment it could certainly stand some editing, and parts of it are rather repetitive which makes the tale lose necessary momentum; this is a story that has to be exciting. Gemmell's trademark is fantasy without magic as much as it is about characters like Odysseus (the perennially present Druss character). There are no deities walking the earth here, just a heightened retelling of history and how it ought to have been. I eagerly await book two. |
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Lord
of the Silver Bow