The Song of Achilles

Fine, BookTok made me buy it.

It didn't take much of a nudge considering how much I loved Circe and how interesting it was to have this perspective after reading Silence of the Girls. And while it didn't reduce me to tears as BookTok would have me believe, I can't begrudge the additional attention that has pushed book sales north of 1 million copies.

And I get the BookTok love. I might venture as far as to say it reads like YA. It has all the necessary fantasy elements, the burgeoning young love in the face of disapproving parents, the tragic choices that must be made, all between wild swings of rapturous joy and plummeting despair. And it is written through the eyes of a young, smitten Patroclus, best-beloved of all of Achilles companions.

But it's based on the Iliad and Miller with her Masters in Classics and years of teaching high school students takes the source material seriously. She nails the major beats but fills in the remaining spaces with such grace. Their time at Mount Pelion studying under the centaur Chiron is a study in young love “We were like gods at the dawning of the world, and our joy was so bright we could see nothing else but the other.”

Miller needs to bank that youthful affection because at Troy we see Achilles coming into his birthright and seeking glory and fame. Miller manages to take a decade of war that left thousands dead, countless innocents killed, and hordes of war brides taken as trophies and reduce it into a vague backdrop onto which Patroclus and Achilles love continues to grow. Achilles is a petulant dick but rendered through the sympathetic eyes of Patroclus he remains redeemable. Also, Miller can write an ending.