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Rating: 
Summary: Very Poorly Copyedited
Review: Luckily my mom gave me this book as a present on the occasion of my recent trip to Turkey to see the ruins of Troy, so I didn't dish out the money for this one myself. Hoping to be inspired by the story while I was there where it happened, I was unfortunately utterly disappointed at the copyediting of the book. Some passages have typical scanner errors with mistaken or transposed letters; others were not spellchecked; still others seem to have been spellchecked but not checked for proper grammar. And this on nearly every page! The English was by no means "modern" in syntax, as claimed. It seems to me that TOR wanted to rush this out before the movie "Troy" appeared in the cinemas, and thus ignored several rules of publishing practice. Their product is a very bad job. In fact, the typos distract so much from the content that I cannot even judge that. My recommendation is to avoid this and go back and read scholarly translations of the classical Iliad and Odyssey. Maybe throw in the Aeneid, to boot. Fight through the verse or prose versions: it's better than fighting through all these typos! I appreciate Mr. Tobin making the effort, but unfortunately it looks like he got paired up with a publisher who only had deadlines and the bottom line in mind.
Rating: 
Summary: Better than reading the Iliad in verse, but.....
Review: The book is easily read and is a fairly faithful retelling of the Iliad by Homer. It does get a little tedious reading about everyone's geneology whenever a new character is introduced, only to have that character immediately killed off by one of the heroes after two pages of introduction. I think the book would have been much better had it also included the story of the judgment of Paris which is the underlying reason for the Trojan War. As it is, the book starts mid-war on the shores of Troy. If the reader didn't already know the history from other background reading, a novice reader probably will be lost, not knowing why the war was started in the first place. The biggest downfall of the book, in my opinion, is that I found at least two editing errors on just about every page! Missing letters, misplaced words, and incomplete words. I found the lack of editing and proof reading highly distracting and irritating. Dubbed as a "Modern English Translation," I think it could have been better presented.
Rating:
Summary: Better than reading the Iliad in verse, but.....
Review: The book is easily read and is a fairly faithful retelling of the Iliad by Homer. It does get a little tedious reading about everyone's geneology whenever a new character is introduced, only to have that character immediately killed off by one of the heroes after two pages of introduction. I think the book would have been much better had it also included the story of the judgment of Paris which is the underlying reason for the Trojan War. As it is, the book starts mid-war on the shores of Troy. If the reader didn't already know the history from other background reading, a novice reader probably will be lost, not knowing why the war was started in the first place. The biggest downfall of the book, in my opinion, is that I found at least two editing errors on just about every page! Missing letters, misplaced words, and incomplete words. I found the lack of editing and proof reading highly distracting and irritating. Dubbed as a "Modern English Translation," I think it could have been better presented.
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