Again quite faithful to the spirit of the text, though not in the same poetic meter (which I don’t mind, since reading it isn’t really emblematic of how it was meant to be delivered). I had forgotten as well that this story isn’t the story of the Trojan War but specifically Achilles’ spat with Agamemnon, so I was surprised to see this end after Hector’s death instead of the fall of Troy. But that’s The Iliad, so that’s what we’ve got here, too. Very good drawings and the history of the gods and the Greek culture of the time is well represented. ( )

This is a brilliant graphic novel to get a great start on an epic like Iliad. Its so beautifully illustrated and very nicely abridged.

After reading this, I felt like I watched a good and long show like Game of Thrones. I think the experience is tough to create in a medium like a graphic novel.

I recommend this if you are keen to get started on the classic texts of the West. This graphic novel is a good starting point before you immerse deep into this world.

I am eagerly looking for to reading the author's next book, The Odyssey. ( )

Wonderful footnotes and notes to help the reader. The visual ques are explained well. ( )

I don't know how many of you out there went to Sunday School as children, but I remember having to read these god-awful children's books with truly ugly art depicting bible tales. Watercolor, with bland-as-hell poses and expressions for everyone... all so worthless that I wished they had just done without the pictures altogether. Maybe the bland tales, too.

"But wait," you say, "This is supposed to be the Iliad! It's exciting and tragic and it has gods and heroes and that damn horse!"

Yeah, well, this is the book where even great tales go to die.

If you want to read the original, READ THE ORIGINAL. Or as in my case, the translation to the original. Go for the poetry one or the prose one. I don't care. It's better than this. Even the text manages to draw out the dull. And if you wanted a great comic portrayal, go watch that horse-dung of a movie that came out in the oughts. It really was comic. And at least it didn't have ALL THESE FOOTNOTES.

You know the old adage, a picture paints a thousand words? Well, the author ignores the great thousands of words and leaves them in the comic and ignores the possible brilliance of the art that could have replaced certain scenes. And then, instead of focusing on the really iconic scenes to great benefit, he gives a lot of space to the random dead that we can list for hours in the original text. I can kinda appreciate that in a "oh, cool, I can't believe he did that," kind of way, but in actuality, I was thinking, "oh, damn, that really, really could have been left out."

My boredom got bored.

Do not read. This is a public service announcement.

*apologies to the artist*

( )

*I WAS PROVIDED A PHYSICAL ARC FOR THE PURPOSE OF THIS REVIEW. THIS DOES NOT AFFECT MY OPINION*

Can I just really quick say how stunning the artwork in this book was? And I have an ARC, so that means that it isn't even colored in yet! Now, that would be a pretty sight to see.

If you—like me—have no clue what the Iliad actually is, this graphic novel is probably for you. I feel like, if you're just starting to learn about this story and everything going on, it'd probably be wiser to see it in pictures first so you can grasp for an idea of what's happening.

Gareth Hinds did a phenomenal job with the artwork, as I've already stated. But not only that, he also really captured the story. I was very confused in some parts, but that was mainly because it's a little hard to follow along when short speech bubbles are suddenly flipped to long ones. On top of that, I felt that it was a little difficult to know where to look. Some of the pages had two-page artwork, and I was a little confused at where to start on those too.

But other than that, I felt like the artwork really made up for the other things. All in all, I'd rate this Graphic Novel a solid 3/5 stars. ( )