The Song of Achilles

My son had to read this for school assigned summer reading not that long ago. He zipped right through it and then was very keen to read Ms. Miller's next book, Circe. He read Circe in three days. So they got added to my TBR pile and I decided to read this one first. It's a different telling of the events of the Iliad and by no means tries to include everything, but here the story is told from what was a secondary character in the Iliad, Patroclus, the companion of Achilles. To say that Patroclus and Achilles are close is to understate things extremely. The writing has that effortless feel to it and the story zips along. I enjoyed the story. Be sure to read the extras at the end too (if you read the paperback “PS” version). I asked my son how the book was reviewed by his classmates. He told me a story of the teacher asking a general question about the book and the first comment was “It's gay!” (I had to laugh.) The teacher's response was, “Well, yeah, it was.” But that's picking out just a smaller part of the story. For the record, my son says Circe is even better (and since I've read The Odyssey, I'm looking forward to that one too.)