A review by richardwells
Helen of Troy by Margaret George

1.0

This was going to be airplane/trip reading for the exciting metropolis of Erie, PA. Sorry to say it didn't even rise above Erie - and that doesn't take much. I decided to give this a shot after reading The Autobiography of Henry VIII a number of years ago. It was a romance, to be sure, but the research seemed solid, and Ms. George breathed life into the characters. It was a pretty good read. "Helen of Troy," is also a romance, but Ms. George had much less a historical record to fall back on, and could only try to fill in the myths. Her Helen is a bit of a love struck/Aphrodite struck dolt, and the rest of the characters are all one dimensional. It's not even much of a bodice ripper. Zeus doesn't generate much heat with Leda, Menalius gets nowhere with Helen, and not much further with the servants, Paris seems a little too good to be true, and though he and Helen try to heat things up the writing isn't near prurient enough to be fun. I left it in the recycle bin in Erie and didn't even get to the fall of Troy. The book was too dull to continue, and too heavy to bring back home.