The Rage of Achilles
by Terence Hawkins
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Book Summary Information
Author: Terence HawkinsEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2009-11-01
ISBN: 1934081205
Number of pages: 198
Publisher: Casperian Books LLC
Book Reviews of The Rage of Achilles
Book Review: Fantastic Story
Summary: 5 Stars
This book satisfied a craving I've had ever since I read Bernard Cornwell's Warlord's trilogy (about Dark-Age Britain and King Arthur) and John Gardner's "Grendel"-- a craving for well written, realistic, literary-style fiction about fantastic subjects. "The Rage of Achilles" is written in smooth, fluent prose without the stilted, flowery, cartoonish, and juvenile writing found in a lot of popular fantasy novels (I don't mean juvenile pejoratively here). Some readers, like me, might actually consider the book an improvement on the Iliad in the sense that Hawkins leaves out a lot of the tedious battle scenes and their long-winded pedigrees and braggary.
For me, the most compelling aspects of the book (aside from the clear, clean prose itself) were its realism and its treatment of explicitly fantastic elements -- the Greek gods. Hawkins doesn't hold back the graphic violence or dance around the issue of Greek sexuality; both are integral elements of the story. And it makes perfect sense. The war for Troy began in lust and infidelity, and it was, as the name suggests, a war. The sex and the violence are never gratuitous, though, merely unabashed. And the characters are just as realistic as their milieu. Odysseus in particular is well drawn and a delight to read, and the scene where Priam sneaks into the Achaean camp is quiet and moving, especially in light of how they've both behaved throughout the book.
Above all, though, I absolutely loved how the author handled the gods. They can be taken literally, but they can also be understood as the Greeks' interpretive framework for talking about and understanding what we comprehend in psychological terms. Men -- especially kings -- aren't simply selfish and greedy; gods send them madness and make them act irrationally and counter to everyone's best interest. A warrior doesn't just get lucky and avoid a barrage of spears and arrows; some god turns them away from him. A great hero doesn't simply lose his nerve; a god leads him into peril with the promise of glory and then abandons him.
I liked this aspect of the novel (and this is true of Iliad as well) so much because it's ambiguous and never comes down definitively on either the literal or figurative side. Both interpretations are possible and neither interferes with the other or with story. Nothing relies on the existence of the gods (even though they're inextricably woven into the story), nothing refutes their existence, and different characters have different understandings of (and uses for) their gods.
I am an extremely picky reader. I don't give books the benefit of the doubt. If a book fails to grab my attention in the first five or ten pages, if the prose feels cheap or prefabricated, if it hits the wrong notes, I won't read it. So it's really unusual for me to buy a book more or less blindly online, but that's exactly what I did with "Rage." I stumbled across Casperian's website purely by accident, the cover of the book caught my eye (I'm a fan of Greek myths), I took a quick look at the sample chapter (which is very brief), and I was hooked. (For some reason I didn't think to check Amazon for reviews and Look-Insides, which I normally do.)
I am so glad I took a chance this time around. Terrence Hawkins is an author whose books I will eagerly anticipate, and Casperian is a publisher I intend to take a closer look at. I just can't recommend this book strongly enough.
Summary of The Rage of Achilles
Blood. Guts. Pride. Wrath. The ancient clash of armies outside the walls of Troy is a cornerstone of Western literature. In The Rage of Achilles, Terence Hawkins brilliantly reimagines that titanic encounter. His stunningly original telling captures the brutality of the battlefield, the glory and the gore, in language that never relents. Raw and compelling, The Rage of Achilles tells the story of Achilles, a monstrous hero, by turns vain and selfish, cruel and noble; of Paris, weak and consumed by lust for his stolen bride; of Agamemnon, driven nearly to insanity by the voices of the gods; and of Trojans and Achaeans, warriors and peasants, caught up in the conflict, their families torn apart by a decade-long war. The Rage of Achilles is an exhilarating story that has captured the imaginations of readers for thousands of years restored to immediacy.Historical Books
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