Wednesday
Jan252006
Troy - By David Gemmell
Wednesday, January 25, 2006 at 10:59PM 
Its Troy Jim but not as we know it. A retelling of an ancient legend from characters you would not expect
On and off over the years I have been a big fan on David Gemmell. He is a man that often writes high fantasy books. There are battles and wars, honourable (and not so honourable) knights, fair maidens etc - I am sure you are familiar with the genre. There has to my mind however been one thing that has separated Mr Gemmell from some of his other contemporaries - and that is that he makes the decisions that other authors will often not make. He will take a character, build him up in the readers mind. He will be the guy that you see as being the hero and you will wish a happy ending for him. Nothing new there you may think - but then you get to the middle of the book and it is all change. Your hero is in a battle, (no doubt to save fair maiden) and then - he gets killed and the story carries on without him. It is not one of these 'Bobby Ewing' moments. The guy will not come out of the shower later on near the end to make everything ok (probably for 2 reasons, one of which being they don’t have showers) he is gone.
In my humble opinion that takes balls. You characters are one of the reasons that people will continue to read your book and finish it, you kill them off and you run the risk that you kill off your readers as well (reading back that sentence is all a bit Never-ending Story).
Anyhow that is something that has always attracted me to David Gemmell’s books, that and the fact that they are always moving along at a fair old pace which helps. However in my time of reading his books I had never taken the time to read any of his historical fantasy, then one day while mooching in Borders looking for something new I saw a novel called Troy - The lord of the silver bow and that all changed.
The basic premise of this novel is take everything that you know, or think you know, about the siege of Troy and the events that lead up to it - take a good tight grip - now screw it up and throw it in the bin. Now you are ready to read this novel. All of the characters that you will have read about (Odysseus, Paris, Hellen, Hektor) are still in the novel but a different view is given of them. The main focus is on Aeneas (who likes to be know as Helikaon - if you look about you will find him in your Greek legends) and what happens to him in the run up to the seige of Troy.
As with all Greek tragedies there is unrequited love (enter Andromache of Thebe-Under-Plakos), the warning from the seers, kings who are bitter and angry and will be punished by the gods, yet this time Gemmell manages to intorduce you to these characters and takes you on a path that lets you understand why they do things the way they do.
There are some down sides to the book. If you have read a lot of David Gemmells work then you will see that there are some strong similarities in the protagonists and there are those that have said they don't like this. Personally I don’t have an issue with it. There are others that have said that the book needed more action. This could well be the case but in this instance I felt that the pace suited the aim of the book. For me it felt like the aim was to introduce the characters that you will become familiar with over the next 2 books (it is the first part of a trilogy) as well as giving you another insight through other characters as to how they were affected by the upcoming siege.
For me this was an enjoyable re-telling of a well known story - and truth be known you really cannot beat that (in my humble opinion that is)
Reader Comments (4)
I just wish part two was out already.I have read pretty much all his books and liked the way Gemmell never used any magic in TROY apart from Kassandras' psychic ability.Even though not a hell of a lot happened in the story, it was still a great read.I loved the way Kalonos got his deserved punishment in the end.
Yeah I know the feeling about waiting for book 2 - I have it on pre-order but patience has never been one of my stronger virtues :-)
One of the things that is odd is the way that you read the book - get totally engrossed and finish it - and at the end you are convinced that loads happened. You then wait a couple of days are realise that really it was only the very beginning of a story and that it was mostly character set up, and that really not a lot went on. The strange bit comes from the fact that at the end - you are not left dissatisfied - you are left wanting more. A lot of other books I have read that take a similar path just leave you frustrated and generally un-impressed but, for me, with this book that was not the case.
I am currently reading the Lion of Macedon - another of Gemmells historical fictions and at the moment I am finding it just as satisfying. I hope at the end of it all I am left with the same positive feelings and expectations as I am after reading Troy!
Lion Of Macedon has to be one of my favourite Gemmell Books . It gives a good insight into the Spartan way of life and how they convinced themselves they were invincible, until Parmenion came along. Book Two "Dark Prince" is worth a read too, but it does delve alot into the Magic and Mystical of the times rather than concentrating more on the man Alexander The Great, but still an excellent story. If you like Scary stories try Gemmells - Winter Warriors or Hero in the Shadows.
I have a copy of the Dark Prince and noticed that it had minotaur on the front and guessed that it might have been a bit more than that. I really liked Winter Warriors - it is a book that I like to go back to again and again - though have not read Hero in the shadows - I will have to go back and look that one out. Thanks for the tip!