Tale of Troy by Benedict Flynn

Tale of Troy Reviews

• 
  Martin

  "To the ancient Greeks the Siege of Troy was the greatest and most important event in the Age of the Heroes – that age of wonder when the Immortals who dwelt on Olympus and whom they worshiped as gods, mingled with mankind and took a visible part in their affairs.
  
  The fall of Troy marks the place where legend ends and history begins; yet that great adventure had its beginnings in the early myths of the making of the world: for the Tale of Troy starts with the story of Prometheus."
  
  And so begins one of the best stories of the ancient world.
  
  I first read this story as a child going through my mythology phase. I put the book aside for many years and only thought of it as a "child's book". Recently my neighbor wanted to share the story of Troy with her high school class. So I found my original book and lent it to her. But before I did so I reread it one more time.
  
  It really marks the end of mythology and the start of history. At the beginning the gods, goddesses, titans, centaurs, nymphs and dryads are everywhere. They are like older, interfering family members that urge you to do strange things. (Some actually are the older relatives of the human heros). At the end they have returned to their home on Mount Olympus never again to mix with mortal men.
  
  The heros go on to found actual Greek cities that are still here today. The city of Athens, from the goddess Athena, is one of the most famous.
  
  The story is too big to be merely summarized in a few paragraphs.
  Just read the book and Enjoy!
• 
  AliReza Alef --- Dooman

  این کتاب بصورت مختصر و مفید جریانات نیمه دوم دوران اسطوره ای و قهرمانی یونان باستان و تمدن غرب رو شرح داده و انصافا منبع مناسبی برای علاقه مندان این مبحثه که نمیخوان بصورت مفصل روش وقت بزارن، البته یک نکته ای هم عرض کنم که این کتاب عملا جلد دوم کتاب اساطیر یونان از همین نویسنده هستش، ترجیحا اول اون رو بخونید تا راحت تر جریانات این کتاب رو متوجه بشید هرچند بدون خوندن اون کتاب هم خلل مهمی در مطالعه این کتاب ایجاد نمیشه
• 
  Jordan

  Another good volume of Roger Lancelyn Green's retellings of ancient myth and legend. This follows on directly from his Tales of the Greek Heroes and refers back to it several times.
  
  The siege itself takes up surprisingly little of the narrative. Approximately the first third of the book covers the background of the war--the judgment of Paris, Helen's marriage to Menelaus with the attending oaths from all the other Greek kings, etc.--the second third focuses on the Trojan War proper, with a good two or three chapters summarizing The Iliad and episodes from other sources like Ovid and Sophocles interwoven (e.g Ajax), and the final third relates the postwar adventures of several heroes, with chapters or sections of chapters based on The Aeneid, Aeschylus's Agamemnon, and of course The Odyssey.
  
  Green's greatest strength in this volume is his ability to evoke the pathos of the original stories; I was almost moved to tears when reading these to my wife, especially the moment when Hector's infant son Astyanax cries out of fear of his father's helmet, which Hector removes to kiss him goodbye, and the little moment in which Odysseus's faithful old dog Argos recognizes him and then dies. Stylistically and interpretationally, Green stands out of the way of the stories themselves and lets them do their work. Well done and very readable.
  
  Highly recommended.
• 
  Saied Davoodi

  جلد دوم پر بود از شخصیت‌هایی که به درستی معرفی نمی‌شد. طوری که بارها و بارها نیاز بود برگردی و اسم شخصیت‌ها رو در کتاب پیدا کنی. یا اینکه از گوگل کمک بگیری. به همین خاطر جریان داستان خیلی کند پیش میره. با اینکه سعی شده به طور مختصر به وقایع پرداخته بشه، اما این اختصار به مفید بودن کتاب آسیب می‌زنه.
  البته نمی‌دونم سهم ترجمه در این نامفهوم بودن داستان‌ها چقدره و سهم مؤف چقدر.
  در کل کتابی نبود که انتظارش رو داشتم. اگر کمی طولانی‌تر بود احتمالاً وسط کار رهاش کرده بودم و می‌رفت توی قفسۀ ناتمام‌ها.
• 
  Kara

  
  A good introductory retelling of the Iliad that includes all the details, especially from the beginning, but doesn't get so deep in the weeds a younger reader would be lost.
• 
  Janell Rhiannon

  This is a great book for younger readers. I bought my copy at the Getty Villa gift shop in Malibu, CA. It's an abridged storytelling.
• 
  Dave Maddock

  Puffin Classics has reprinted all six of Roger Lancelyn Green's re-tellings of myths and legends--and my son owns them all. We actually started with
  Myths Of The Norsemen prior to a trip to Iceland last year, but haven't (yet) finished it. He is currently on a huge Greco-Roman mythology kick thanks to
  Rick Riordan. He devoured
  Percy Jackson's Greek Gods in like two days.
  
  Green's syntax is occasionally antiquated for no good reason, but otherwise these books are solid. While the worst excesses are glossed over, there is still a fair amount of questionable content which should come as no surprise to those familiar with these stories--plenty of violence, forced marriages, etc. These have sparked some good discussions with my son. Some parents might find this content understandably objectionable. On the other hand, many of those parents think nothing of such content at sunday school where it is often decreed by a God they aren't willing to criticize for it. So it goes.
• 
  Edy Gies

  Once again, another masterpiece of mythology. I greatly enjoy the stories, but still can't quite understand why anyone would say these stories are just as believable as the Bible. I love reading the stories about the Age of Heroes and the gods and goddesses, but the fact that this could be plausible is befuddling to me. I would and will highly recommend that my students read this, but not as a history but as a retelling of the epic story of Troy and the Trojan War as known to the ancient Greeks. If any story could be inspiring it is this one. A story of Helen, with a face that launched a thousand ships and a conflict that took over 10 years to resolve. The fierce warriors Odysseus, Achilles, Ajax, and others make a compelling and fascinating story that has been worth telling and and retelling for thousands of years.
• 
  Ferris Mx

  I always have a hard time keeping my Greek mythological figures straight and this helped. I think I'll have to reread it from time to time, because I still can't keep my Perseus and my Theseus straight, etc.
  
  When normalized such as in this book, the Greek mythology is no more or less plausible than the Biblical mythology.
• 
  Cameron

  A brief and child friendly telling of the siege of Troy and the endings of all of the heroes (questionable description of some of them...) involved.
  
  Succinct and ties it together nicely with nothing "missing", though it has got yearning to reread the Odyssey in full again and then have a go at the Iliad and Aeneid.
  
  
• 
  Tim

  Reads a bit too much like a phone book, with numerous characters appearing only once and having names too difficult to remember. The treatment of women may shock modern readers. Many famous heroes appear here and in all I felt that time spent reading the book was time spent wisely.
• 
  Dobarah

  The story is well told, but I listened to the version from Overdrive...and the recording was second rate. I think my children would like the book much better!
• 
  Joshua

  An excellent intro to the famous epics.
• 
  Susie

  A simple retelling of the Illiad, nice length for listening to while working on a project.
• 
  pam

  can't explain how crushed i am
• 
  stephanie suh

  To retell a story is harder than to create one from void because it requires a special ability with the aid of natural wit to make the original source texts adapt to the contemporary readership of the time the author belongs to. In this regard, The Tale of Troy by Roger Lancelyn Green is an excellent retelling of Trojan War that happened beyond the misty horizon of millenniums, which the father of western narrative history Herodotus defines as the Heroic Age of the Five Ages of Man (which, by the way, Ovid interestingly omitted in his Roman version of the Ages of Men) when divine immortals hobnobbed with and even made love with common mortals sired half-god, half-mortal.
  
  The Tale of Troy by Roger Lancelyn Green bears a witness in your heart to the terrific Heroic Age disappearing into the mystic yonder of the Elysium Fields with vivid authorial accounts of evoking the fascinating images of the heroes, gods, goddesses, nymphs, and mythological beasts, all embroiled in the arena of historical war. Drawn on a compendium of classical narratives of ancient writers, principally Homer’s Iliad, Green retells the beginning and end of Trojan War, reprises the scenes of the heroic characters and capricious Immortals, and remasters the thematic theater of dramas so appealing to our contemporary minds that the story collapses a great divide of realms of heaven and earth, of the ancient and the modern, with his genius story-telling skills as an erudite but affable raconteur.
  
  Green takes you to the farthest possible to the Christ-like titan Prometheus punished for his divine compassion for mankind to the wedding banquet of Menelaus and Helen in Sparta where the goddess of discord Eris first presented an apple of discord, to Paris of Troy happily living with Oenone, a mountain nymph, on Mount Ida, to the Greek Camp outside the Wall of Troy where Agamemnon and Achilles were having a row over their beautiful Trojan female captives, and to Odysseus’s proverbial 10-year journey back to his Ithaca. Then the tale of Troy regenerates more stories about the fates of the characters following the end of the epic war, which leads to the dawn of the Iron Age, the Age of Man, where history as what we are textually familiar with, which is still ongoing like Odysseus’s journey to the destined purpose.
  
  The Tale of Troy, which is as a matter of fact focused on the last few weeks in the final year of the war, is a literary equivalent of Matryoshka, a frame story embedded in manifold stories that surprise you with a jolly expectation of ‘what next?” Thus, it has no occasion for boredom as a result of the pedantic display of archeological artifices, ostentatious authority of scholastic knowledge usually associated with classical texts. That said, you should not make a rash judgment to regard this book as an abridged version of the great classical literature to be found in the aisle of Children’s book section in booksellers. Instead, it is Green’s altruistic intention to propagate the legacy of Mankind and cherish it as a great cultural endowment to the posterity of the forefathers of human enterprise by sharing his erudition of the Classical in universally comprehensive language with extraordinary vividness and superb narrative skills.
  
  This book is a magical casement of the misty past told by a Homeric storyteller of our modern time who will take you to where the ancient ocean sends forth the breeze of the shrill Aegean Sun to let you sail an imaginary voyage with the Greek Kings and the Trojan refugees, while the Olympian gods are watching you from Mount Olympus.
• 
  Johanna Burton

  The Tale of Troy takes Homer's Iliad and Odyssey and re-spins them in a fun yet informative way. I have spent some time studying Troy and the Trojan War and I remember starting this book but all the names and subplots were too confusing and I soon gave up. Not long after I got into reading Percy Jackson and I studied more about the Iliad and the Odyssey so became more familiar with the characters and figures in Greek Mythology. When I stumbled upon this book again I thought I'd give it another try and I'm so glad that I did. I will say that you do have to be pretty locked in when reading this. Even though I had a fairly good understanding of the characters and the plot I found myself lost a couple of times. But, don't let this intimidate you. Roger Lancelyn Green does a wonderful job of keeping it light and exciting while dealing also with topics of war and vengeance. I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys reading about Greek Mythology and has a basic understanding of the gods and goddesses and or Homer's epics. The same author has also written
  Tales of the Greek Heroes: Retold From the Ancient Authors which I am hoping to read sometime in the future. Happy Reading Everyone :)
• 
  Esther

  Ah the last book I bought before lockdown, from one of my favorite secondhand stores which has a rambling eclectic book section. Been meaning to read more about Greek myths for a while, so this Puffin paperback stirred some nostalgia for my youth as well. But also reading this reminded me perhaps why to a large extent my reading career ground to a halt around early teenage years, beyond mandated school texts. This is so dry, YA was not a defined market in my day and there were too many worthy Puffin books like this which were not very interesting to read despite having interesting subject matter. This also packs in too much detail in overlong sentences - x who was the husband of y, fought a & b with the gods 4 & 5 leading to his son by first wife h being sacrificed by gods 8 & 9 who lived on the island of z and fought duel with previously mentioned sons first wife's cousin...do keep up.... I think I'll try Stephen Fry's Mythos instead.
• 
  Rick

  The Tale of Troy is an excellent retelling of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey by Roger Lancelyn Green for young adult readers. Green remains true to the original sources, nicely preserving these lively, interesting legends and making them accessible to whole new generations. The book was written in the 1950s so the vocabulary is more advanced than young adult books written today, but I don't think it's a significant barrier because the writing overall is clear and easy to understand. The more challenging, somewhat old-fashioned words used occasionally, do not really interfere with understanding the story. My young son had no trouble following the story as I read it to him, and always wanted to hear what was going to happen in the next chapter. Green has done a great service in retelling these ancient legends in a way that is accessible to young people.
• 
  Madeline

  This children's edition uses many tales to give the backgrounds and epilogues of all the heroes. I love that Green starts each chapter with passages from famous poems about Troy. This edition also includes resources that make it more accessible for kids: glossary of names and terms, explanations of ancient Greek culture, etc.
  
  I have one complaint. There are so many stories crammed in that it often feels rushed and summarized. It often lacks the dramatic power of Olivia Coolidge's version. This serves to make the upsetting elements (killing Hector's toddler son) less horrifying, but it also flattens the characters.
• 
  Lisa

  This is a book that I wish I had read as a kid and find myself very fortunate to read now. Mr. Green writes the famous story of Helen and Paris and the war fought to win her back in a fluid, easy to read style that doesn't detract from the details of the war. And he pulls from other ancient texts, not just the Iliad, and in turn familiarizes the reader with the connection between the Greek tragedy plays and Homer's epics. Brilliantly done! A great book to help pave the way for a later reading of the classics.
• 
  Sebastian Magri

  It was a solid book. I wouldn't say it is something that I'd ride home about. I enjoyed being a part of the tradition that dates back thousands of years. Not to mention that the actual tales of the heroes and tragedies are second to none. Perhaps that is why they have lasted this long. It was a very quick read. It was more of a transition book for me. I didn't really have to spend long thought into it. Yet its stories are still fascinating to read. It was good, not amazing, but still a worthy read.
• 
  Ayasha Nordiawan

  making up for my gaps in this entire trojan thing (pls idk why I got so invested, I hate this) but it was nice to have context before The Odyssey without having to lose braincells reading The Iliad.
  This was a pretty quick and easy read as well (...compare it to 600 pages of the Iliad. Yep. Exactly.) And I think it caught the gist, kept some of the humour and the ~style~ of how the original epic would've been written and such.
  
  just saying but this has never been about helen and pairs... has it....
• 
  Shatadru

  Such a retelling of the Heroic Age in such simplified manners! The only regret I have is that If I only had got to know of this magnificent book in my younger days!
  
  Also, the introduction to this book by Michelle Paver is probably the best introduction to any book I have come across in recent times.
• 
  Tara Sydney

  This follows in a similar vein to the same author's Adventures of the Greek Heroes. It tells the story in a simple but engaging way, which very much fits the nature of these tales.
  He strived to remain true to the original sources of the stories of Troy and weaved them together in an accessible and rather enchanting manner.