"Troy. The most marvellous kingdom in all the world. The Jewel of the Aegean. Glittering Ilion, the city that rose and fell not once but twice . . ."
The story of Troy speaks to all of us -- the kidnapping of Helen, a queen celebrated for her beauty, sees the Greeks launch a thousand ships against that great city, to which they will lay siege for ten whole and very bloody years.
It is Zeus, the king of the gods, who triggers war when he asks the Trojan prince Paris to judge the fairest goddess of them all. Aphrodite bribes Paris with the heart of Helen, wife of King Menelaus of the Greeks, and naturally, nature takes its course.
It is a terrible, brutal war with casualties on all sides. The Greeks cannot defeat the Trojans -- since Achilles, the Greek's boldest warrior, is consumed with jealousy over an ally's choice of lover, the Trojan slave Briseis, and will not fight . . .
The stage is set for the oldest and greatest story ever told, where monstrous passions meet the highest ideals and the lowest cunning.
In Troy you will find heroism and hatred, love and loss, revenge and regret, desire and despair. It is these human passions, written bloodily in the sands of a distant shore, that still speak to us today.
Troy is a myth in which we seek the truth about ourselves, which Stephen Fry brings breathtakingly to life for our modern age.
Staff Choice: Martijn
This is just as much fun as his two previous books on Greek mythology. 5 stars! Go and read them, you will not regret it!
Staff Choice: Bella
I knew from the moment I finished Mythos that I would love every single book in this series. All I knew about the Trojan war was the Trojan horse. Fry's way of writing puts a spell on me that prevents me from putting the book down. This book makes me laugh out loud, enables me to visualize every single second of the story as I'm reading, and makes the characters and their emotions relatable. I could also hear his voice in my head as I was reading each word. The footnotes including linguistic, historical, and geographical facts are an added bonus for anyone that thinks there is no limit to the amount of knowledge that is to be learned. He is busy writing the 4th and final book in this series called 'The Odyssey'. I cannot wait!