I love the Trojan War, but why does every author tell it the same way? There are so many characters and sides and intricate details to it, I suppose that the reader does admittedly need to know the same basic details every time. Iphigenia - royal daughter and sacrifice to the gods

Odysseus - the mortal who was as clever as ZeusĪgamemnon - forced to choose between his pledge to his brother and the life of his daughterĬlytemnestra - wife and murderer of AgamemnonĪchilles - greatest warrior in ancient Greece Now the tragic prophecy that Paris would cause the fall of Troy and the greatest war Greece had ever seen began to be fulfilled. But then Aphrodite, the goddess of love, promised Paris of Troy the most beautiful woman for his wife. When she chose Menelaus as her husband, the other great chiefs vowed to band together and make war against anyone who dared steal her. Helen was the most beautiful woman the ancient world had ever seen. Here we meet the legendary gods and goddesses whose exploits, whether brave and strong or proud and foolish, lead the reader from one adventure-filled tale to the next. The drama and elegance of the ancient Greek myths are recaptured in this series by award-winning author and storyteller Doris Gates.

Though the book features Gates usual readable style and is probably useful for sharing these stories with younger readers, it comes up short in her overall lexicon, and is an unsatisfying and anticlimactic contribution to the larger wealth of Trojan War related literature and retellings. Odysseus is his usual wily self, and largely the most sympathetic figure in the story, but he becomes unexplainably war mongering when it comes to the Iphigenia episode, which Gates largely takes, point for point, from the Euripides play about her sacrifice at Aulis. This might have been a more interesting approach if Gates had something new to say about the characters, but her Helen and Paris mostly emerge as figures we've seen before: the callous beauty queen and the vain but handsome simpleton. Aeneas and Andromache are mentioned only once each, while Hector and Cassandra are background figures of only slightly more prominence. Missing are many of the iconic figures of the Trojan saga, namely Patroclus, Ajax, Neoptolemus, Nestor, Cressida, Astyanax, and Troilus. The sixth and final book in Doris Gates' Greek mythology collection, this retelling of the story of Troy glosses over most of the war and its aftermath to focus on key moments leading up to the war itself: the marriage of Helen to Menelaus, the Judgement of Paris, the abduction of Helen, the recruitment of Odysseus and Achilles, and the sacrifice of Iphigenia.

Blue Willow by Doris Gates