The Iliad by Gareth Hinds
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

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*



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