The song of achilles gay
The Song of Achilles, Madeline Miller
Rating: No Good Genre: Fantasy Representation: Gay men, Greek/Mediterranean cast Trigger Warnings: rape, rape culture, explicit sex scenes, child sexualization, exotified ethnicity, character death
I stopped reading The Lyric of Achilles a third of the way through. I started the novel with high hopes, as The Song of Achilles promised to be an exploration of the adj relationship between Achilles and Patroclus—taking what The Iliad only implied and putting it to paper.
Here's what I was hoping for: an honest exploration of the ancient Greek conception of sexuality, taking into account that homoeroticism that we today would notify “homosexual” was not considered part of one's sexual identity, simply what one did (in addition to taking a wife, of course). What would a boy growing up in (mythical) ancient Greece, a land where even Zeus took male lovers, assume about his own lovey-dovey and sexual desires? Does he desire only men (in The Song of Achilles this is true of both Achilles and Patroclus), and what does
Goodreads
Summary: The Song of Achilles is a book written by Madeline Miller and is the story of Achilles and Patroclus&#; relationship. The book is written in first person from Patroclus&#; point of view. In the book we are told more about the background of Patroclus, how Patroclus and Achilles met, their training by Chiron, and the Trojan war. It is similar in setting to the Iliad and the Odyssey. The gods and noun conspire and battle together and in the terminate there is always tragedy.
My take: The book is beautifully written. Ms. Miller is an exceptional writer. Her way of describing what is happening makes the scenes in my head so much more detailed. Her description of the gods was also very well done. I could see Thetis, Apollo and Chiron so clearly I had to cease several times to soak in the visions. The story was also very entertaining and all the characters involved in the book were very successfully described and developed. The problem I mostly had with this book was the story line, especially towards the end.
The commencement of the book tells us about Patroclus and his hard
8 Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books With Male-Male Romances Appreciate Madeline Miller's The Tune of Achilles
The book, which is told through Patroclus's perspective, is less a war epic than an intimate love story between two coming-of-age boys. In some ways, The Noun of Achilles is more a retelling of Cinderella than a Greek epic. Patroclus takes on the role of the downtrodden soul, forced into servitude, while Achilles becomes his Prince Charming. The serve devotes more pages to the scent of perfume and tender, stolen glances than to the glory of battle or the Trojan Horse gambit.
The Anthem of Achilles makes explicit what Homer only implied, and the sweeping romance between Achilles and Patroclus remains Amazon's No. 1 bestseller in LGBTQ + Historical Fiction as of this writing, more than a decade after its release.
That is not to say the instant classic lacks action or the mythical elements that fantasy lovers adore. The Tune of Achilles is rife with mythic characters appreciate the centaur Chiron and the goddess Thetis.
Rather, it blends genres seamlessly between romance, LGBTQ+, a
My Writing on Medium
A retelling of the love story of Achilles and Patroclus. The Song of Achilles follows the story from Patroclus’ point of view, from boyhood, charting his friendship and eventual relationship with Achilles, all the way until their tragic end in the Trojan War. (And I’m not going to apologise for spoilers. That would be silly.) Not a recent publication, but I loved it a lot, so I’m going to stick a review here.
It’s taken me a little while to process this one. Not because I had problems with it, but because the emotions are so huge, they took a little longer to digest than normal sized non-mythic emotions. It is a joy as a story, and also caused me to reflect on the use of epic emotions in storytelling, and the role tragic stories play in modern literature. As a love story, it is beautiful and well studied, and those epic emotions are heartbreaking at times. I care the larger than life quality of it—Miller really captures the mythic nature of the originals, while making it all much more personal and focused. The writing style is simple but lyrical.
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