A review by cade
City on Fire by Don Winslow

4.0

This book has a lot in common with the [b:The Power of the Dog|206236|The Power of the Dog (Power of the Dog, #1)|Don Winslow|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1467260965l/206236._SY75_.jpg|158974] series by the same author. There are people of various temperaments all trying to navigate through a world of organized crime where intense competition and opportunism severely constrain the viable choices. There's a lot to enjoy in this book: rivalry and alliance, betrayal and loyalty, deception and fidelity, lust and romance, violence and mercy, greed and generosity. All of that would have made this a good book. However, the thing that elevates this book to another level is the fact that it is a retelling of the story of the Trojan War (beyond the scope in the Iliad itself) and is the first in a trilogy that also includes The Aeneid and The Odyssey. Figuring out which character in this book corresponds to which character in those epics and how the plot points in this mirror the key points in the others is a whole extra layer of fun to enjoy.

There is pleasure in seeing Winslow's cleverness in recasting exalted classics with royalty and gods as a gritty small-town gangster story. Winslow does a nice job drawing extensively from his source material without becoming slavishly bound to mirroring every detail. The artistic license is to "never let the truth get in the way of a good story," and in this case Winslow applies this to the "truth" of the original Greek source material. He makes wise decisions about which details to keep, which to adapt, and which to deviate from. This allows the story to make sense and be enjoyed by a reader that has no awareness it is a retelling of the classics while leaving enough faithful echoes to impress and amuse the reader keeping a mental Venn diagram as he reads along.