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winedarkwords's review
adventurous
emotional
informative
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.25
mlindner's review against another edition
3.0
This seems well executed but I couldn't bring myself to care. I know this story, or at least versions of it. I found his after material quite interesting and he had certainly done his research.
He claims there were to be 7 volumes (too lazy to verify if actual state) but this was 200 pages. I also got volume 2 and volume 3 A & B at the public library. Each are about the same size. So 1400 or possibly even more on The Iliad. No thanks. It might be for you though.
He claims there were to be 7 volumes (too lazy to verify if actual state) but this was 200 pages. I also got volume 2 and volume 3 A & B at the public library. Each are about the same size. So 1400 or possibly even more on The Iliad. No thanks. It might be for you though.
dr_matthew_lloyd's review against another edition
2.0
In reading Volume 1 of Eric Shanower's Age of Bronze, it becomes apparent why [b:The Iliad|1371|The Iliad|Homer|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1388188509s/1371.jpg|3293141] and [b:The Odyssey|1381|The Odyssey|Homer|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1390173285s/1381.jpg|3356006] survived the millennia, while the rest of the epic cycle come down to us only in fragments: it's really, really dull. While the Iliad has themes of glory and revenge, mortality and memory, alongside quite literally epic battle scenes, and the Odyssey is an archetypal story of there-and-back-again, monsters at the edge of the world, loss and recovery, the early scenes from the epic cycle include beauty contests with gods, irrational love affairs, and the politics of idiocy. It is very difficult for most modern adaptations of this story to really capture a good reason why Paris/Alexander should abduct (or elope with, or rape) Helen and get away with it, why Priam and Troy should protect him, and why the Achaeans should all attack Troy. Shanower's version removes the gods - more on which later - but doesn't remove religious obligation, visions, or prophecy. This ties the characters up in events belong their control, which is really the case: Shanower expresses his desire not "to invent, but to tell anew", and thus surrenders himself to teleology - characters do what they do because that's what they do, not for any obvious motive. It's a sequence of events, in order, with generally the same characters. It's not much of a story.
While some of these problems may be with the sources for the story, Shanower's unwillingness to "invent" leaves the story and characters somewhat flat. This flatness is especially obvious in the case of the women in the story, the most obvious examples being three of the most powerful, evocative women from Greek mythology (Medea aside): Helen, Penelope, and Clytemnestra. Helen is introduced when the affair with Paris has already begun and she is running away with him. Apparently this is because Paris has made her realize what passion is, which, judging from the immaturity and idiocy with which Paris has been characterized in the earlier parts of the story, is difficult to believe. We don't even get to see her face until Paris reveals her to his fellow Trojans, thus removing her own agency or identity beyond her beauty. While Helen might not be an obvious character to make fascinating, Clytemnestra comes ready-made in Classical tragedy such as Aeschylus' [b:The Oresteia|1519|The Oresteia (Ορέστεια, #1-3)|Aeschylus|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1466835778s/1519.jpg|2378] and Euripides' Elektra as fascinating. Yet all she gets in this volume is shushed by Agamemnon when glimpsed in his bed. Worst of all, Penelope, who is described by the poet of the Odyssey as the equal of her husband, just stands by and watches his scheme to avoid service when she should have been totally in on it. I'm reading A Thousand Ships in a post-[b:The Penelopiad|17645|The Penelopiad|Margaret Atwood|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1442806554s/17645.jpg|3016476] world, so perhaps my expectations for the characterization of Penelope are higher than that of readers when the comic book was originally published. But there is so much scope for creating a human Athena (especially if you're excluding the gods) that it's painful for it to be missed.
It's painfully obvious how much more interesting these women could be, but it doesn't stop there. The minor female characters are usually presented as boy-crazy, only interested in marrying a boy (usually the one that they actually do marry, to ensure that Paris and Helen are the only complication, with the exception of poor Polyxena). As with Helen, it's difficult to see what Oenone sees in Paris, or Deidamia in Achilles. But that's their point, so they do it. the boys, meanwhile, are all young, playful jokers who occasionally break from their care-free attitudes to have sex with one of the girls; meanwhile the men are all scowling, angry men blundering into a war without a point. It's nowhere near as interesting as Euripides' twist on the tale - the war was over Helen, but she was never in Troy.
This flatness is emphasised by the exclusion of the most interesting characters from Greek mythology. It's not an original idea to exclude the gods from the Trojan War, but it is almost invariably a bad one, especially as Achilles' mother is a god, and vital to the plot. Shanower's reasoning also doesn't hold up, in my opinion: "so many are quick to look beyond themselves for answers or to assign blame." The better twenty-first century metaphor would be to present the gods as powerful figures completely ignorant of the suffering and experience oftheir constituents the mortals who worship them; interested only in their own powers and plans, they create disaster on the lower orders, think themselves blameless, and suffer no consequences. I think the gods in epic are a perfect metaphor for the things we can't control; [a:Dan Simmons|2687|Dan Simmons|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1427999015p2/2687.jpg]'s storyline in [b:Ilium|3973|Ilium (Ilium, #1)|Dan Simmons|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1390894862s/3973.jpg|3185401] and [b:Olympos|3972|Olympos (Ilium, #2)|Dan Simmons|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1388216654s/3972.jpg|1537178], where the only solution to the war is to turn both Trojans and Achaeans on the gods who oppress them , is a much better use of this story. Put simply, the gods are more essential to epic than the structure of the story. It may be unbelievable with them, but it's even more so without.
On "believability", it may be clear to anyone who has read my review of [b:The Trojan War: A Very Short Introduction|16685187|The Trojan War A Very Short Introduction|Eric H. Cline|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1355906159s/16685187.jpg|22901196] by [a:Eric H. Cline|106142|Eric H. Cline|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1233696406p2/106142.jpg], I have strong feelings about the historicity of the Trojan War, especially it's Bronze Age setting. Put simply, I do not think that anything is gained by debating whether or not the Trojan War is based on an historical event, as in the format in which the story comes down to us that historical event is completely unrecoverable. Shanower repeats a lot of the problematic statements which Cline makes in his "Afterword", and indeed Cline is thanked in the acknowledgements. But that being said, I actually enjoyed the Bronze Age anacro-mulch which is the setting of this volume. After all, an amalgamation of different chronological bits is the material culture setting of the epics. Shanower's dismissal of the Classical look is disheartening, especially as Agamemnon is specifically said in the Iliad to have had a Gorgoneion shield which would not have existed before the seventh century; and personally I think the best setting would be an eighth/seventh century style Aegean, but the Bronze Age largely works. I'm not so sure about the Horns of Consecration (a Minoan religious symbol) on the Palace of Nestor, nor Shanower's assertion in the "Afterword" that Agamemnon had a face which could be reconstructed (he didn't, because he's not real). But the look of the volume is quite nice, even if it's not quite any actual period of the Late Bronze Age exactly.
If I were to characterize the problem with Age of Bronze as an idea, I'd say it was entirely Shanower's desire to retell without invention. There are clearly some creative decisions being made, but a reluctance to say anything interesting, to do anything besides tell a story. He wants to make it relevant, it seems, if his reason for excluding the gods is anything to go by, but there's no other evidence of any attempt to actually do that. He's amalgamating the inventions of other people, such as Troilus and Cressida, which was a medieval story, and doesn't really see the disjuncture between being willing to include that, but nothing of his own. It ends up coming across as flavourless. I'd rather have a story which I hated but which crafted these mythological characters into people than this bland reiterating of plot points which I already knew.
While some of these problems may be with the sources for the story, Shanower's unwillingness to "invent" leaves the story and characters somewhat flat. This flatness is especially obvious in the case of the women in the story, the most obvious examples being three of the most powerful, evocative women from Greek mythology (Medea aside): Helen, Penelope, and Clytemnestra. Helen is introduced when the affair with Paris has already begun and she is running away with him. Apparently this is because Paris has made her realize what passion is, which, judging from the immaturity and idiocy with which Paris has been characterized in the earlier parts of the story, is difficult to believe. We don't even get to see her face until Paris reveals her to his fellow Trojans, thus removing her own agency or identity beyond her beauty. While Helen might not be an obvious character to make fascinating, Clytemnestra comes ready-made in Classical tragedy such as Aeschylus' [b:The Oresteia|1519|The Oresteia (Ορέστεια, #1-3)|Aeschylus|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1466835778s/1519.jpg|2378] and Euripides' Elektra as fascinating. Yet all she gets in this volume is shushed by Agamemnon when glimpsed in his bed. Worst of all, Penelope, who is described by the poet of the Odyssey as the equal of her husband, just stands by and watches his scheme to avoid service when she should have been totally in on it. I'm reading A Thousand Ships in a post-[b:The Penelopiad|17645|The Penelopiad|Margaret Atwood|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1442806554s/17645.jpg|3016476] world, so perhaps my expectations for the characterization of Penelope are higher than that of readers when the comic book was originally published. But there is so much scope for creating a human Athena (especially if you're excluding the gods) that it's painful for it to be missed.
It's painfully obvious how much more interesting these women could be, but it doesn't stop there. The minor female characters are usually presented as boy-crazy, only interested in marrying a boy (usually the one that they actually do marry, to ensure that Paris and Helen are the only complication, with the exception of poor Polyxena). As with Helen, it's difficult to see what Oenone sees in Paris, or Deidamia in Achilles. But that's their point, so they do it. the boys, meanwhile, are all young, playful jokers who occasionally break from their care-free attitudes to have sex with one of the girls; meanwhile the men are all scowling, angry men blundering into a war without a point. It's nowhere near as interesting as Euripides' twist on the tale - the war was over Helen, but she was never in Troy.
This flatness is emphasised by the exclusion of the most interesting characters from Greek mythology. It's not an original idea to exclude the gods from the Trojan War, but it is almost invariably a bad one, especially as Achilles' mother is a god, and vital to the plot. Shanower's reasoning also doesn't hold up, in my opinion: "so many are quick to look beyond themselves for answers or to assign blame." The better twenty-first century metaphor would be to present the gods as powerful figures completely ignorant of the suffering and experience of
On "believability", it may be clear to anyone who has read my review of [b:The Trojan War: A Very Short Introduction|16685187|The Trojan War A Very Short Introduction|Eric H. Cline|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1355906159s/16685187.jpg|22901196] by [a:Eric H. Cline|106142|Eric H. Cline|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1233696406p2/106142.jpg], I have strong feelings about the historicity of the Trojan War, especially it's Bronze Age setting. Put simply, I do not think that anything is gained by debating whether or not the Trojan War is based on an historical event, as in the format in which the story comes down to us that historical event is completely unrecoverable. Shanower repeats a lot of the problematic statements which Cline makes in his "Afterword", and indeed Cline is thanked in the acknowledgements. But that being said, I actually enjoyed the Bronze Age anacro-mulch which is the setting of this volume. After all, an amalgamation of different chronological bits is the material culture setting of the epics. Shanower's dismissal of the Classical look is disheartening, especially as Agamemnon is specifically said in the Iliad to have had a Gorgoneion shield which would not have existed before the seventh century; and personally I think the best setting would be an eighth/seventh century style Aegean, but the Bronze Age largely works. I'm not so sure about the Horns of Consecration (a Minoan religious symbol) on the Palace of Nestor, nor Shanower's assertion in the "Afterword" that Agamemnon had a face which could be reconstructed (he didn't, because he's not real). But the look of the volume is quite nice, even if it's not quite any actual period of the Late Bronze Age exactly.
If I were to characterize the problem with Age of Bronze as an idea, I'd say it was entirely Shanower's desire to retell without invention. There are clearly some creative decisions being made, but a reluctance to say anything interesting, to do anything besides tell a story. He wants to make it relevant, it seems, if his reason for excluding the gods is anything to go by, but there's no other evidence of any attempt to actually do that. He's amalgamating the inventions of other people, such as Troilus and Cressida, which was a medieval story, and doesn't really see the disjuncture between being willing to include that, but nothing of his own. It ends up coming across as flavourless. I'd rather have a story which I hated but which crafted these mythological characters into people than this bland reiterating of plot points which I already knew.
jkenna's review against another edition
5.0
This was so good! I could not put it down and I'm really excited to read volume two!
kikiandarrowsfishshelf's review against another edition
5.0
This is the events leading up to the ships leaving for Troy. What you have is the discovery of Paris, the gathering of the army, and so on. Shanower pays very good attention to the threads of the story.
abetterbradley's review against another edition
5.0
This is volume one of Eric Shanower's epic retelling of The Trojan War. This is a must read for any fans of Greek mythology.
jsjammersmith's review against another edition
5.0
Sing to me, O Muse, that I may inspire someone to pick up this historically accurate retelling of the war of Troy in the form of a graphic novel...actually, I'll just do that myself because this book inspired me enough.
The Greeks as a people are often mythologized and romanticized to the point that they lose some of their teeth. Having dug more and more into the history and culture of ancient Greece I've found, to my delight, that the greeks far more resembled the bearded barbarians who sacked Rome, twice, than the lofty marble statues one might find in a poem by Keats. This is partly the reason why this book is so wonderful.
Eric Shanower could have simply fallen back upon the glorious image of the ancient Greek peoples and filled his pages with Adonis after adonis encountering gods and goddesses. But in fact, this book is far more enjoyable for the way it tries to ground the classic narrative of the Trojan conflict in a realistic human narrative informed by the actual culture, paradigms, and possibilities of humanity. The reader is sure to recognize the characters they know and love (or else the ones they were forced to read in high school, not everybody is a nerd like me), but this story is told in such a way that one feels the real drama and understanding as why this war was fought over in the first place.
This first volume sets up the characters and the beginnings of the war for Troy and ends as the Greek navy sais for Anatolia. And while the attention to historic and anatomical detail is marvelous, more than anything else is the artwork. Shanower illustrates every page with a concern for portraying real people rather than idealized portraits. In this way, the reader is sure to appreciate the Greek protagonists, men like Agamemnon, Odysseus, Achilles, and Menelaus, and real human beings rather than idealized forms in ancient stories.
Age of Bronze is a wonderful book and I cannot wait to continue this series.
The Greeks as a people are often mythologized and romanticized to the point that they lose some of their teeth. Having dug more and more into the history and culture of ancient Greece I've found, to my delight, that the greeks far more resembled the bearded barbarians who sacked Rome, twice, than the lofty marble statues one might find in a poem by Keats. This is partly the reason why this book is so wonderful.
Eric Shanower could have simply fallen back upon the glorious image of the ancient Greek peoples and filled his pages with Adonis after adonis encountering gods and goddesses. But in fact, this book is far more enjoyable for the way it tries to ground the classic narrative of the Trojan conflict in a realistic human narrative informed by the actual culture, paradigms, and possibilities of humanity. The reader is sure to recognize the characters they know and love (or else the ones they were forced to read in high school, not everybody is a nerd like me), but this story is told in such a way that one feels the real drama and understanding as why this war was fought over in the first place.
This first volume sets up the characters and the beginnings of the war for Troy and ends as the Greek navy sais for Anatolia. And while the attention to historic and anatomical detail is marvelous, more than anything else is the artwork. Shanower illustrates every page with a concern for portraying real people rather than idealized portraits. In this way, the reader is sure to appreciate the Greek protagonists, men like Agamemnon, Odysseus, Achilles, and Menelaus, and real human beings rather than idealized forms in ancient stories.
Age of Bronze is a wonderful book and I cannot wait to continue this series.
zehroni's review
3.0
I enjoyed the story and some bits of the writing, but I probably won't continue on with this. While I did enjoy the illustrations, it also didn't help that all of the characters looked so similar. I think it's filled to the brim with information and characters that made it hard to keep track of who was doing what and where they were doing it. That aspect made my reading of this kind of drag. I didn't know much about the Trojan War going into this so that could be why I felt overwhelmed with how much info is in this. I did learn quite a bit, but I think I'll read some other books about the Greek myths and try this again afterward so I can get more out of it.
willohreadz's review
adventurous
informative
tense
medium-paced
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence, Toxic relationship, Sexual violence, Sexual assault, Sexism, and Rape
missmarketpaperback's review
3.0
After owning this for many years, I finally read it! Yay! I really liked this re-telling, especially after reading the author/artist's reasons for interpreting different things certain ways. I loved how he interpreted Thetis for instance. But I found this retelling to be very heteronormative, which made me a little sad. I much prefer the Song of Achilles' Achilles. I loved the outfits and the way he stitched the different narratives together.