It's hard to give this less than five stars, but I've got no other honest option. Dolan's retelling is fantastic and his War Nerd voice is as compelling as ever, but I just don't think the Iliad is very much fun to read.

(Not that this review will reach many who are unfamiliar with him, but Dolan's War Nerd persona is a cynical, funny, grimy perspective that cuts through BS and highlights the unpleasant truths of the universal human endeavor of war)

This will demonstrate my ignorance, but I was surprised that the Iliad doesn't contain the most famous bits of Trojan War myth: there's no wooden horse and Achilles doesn't meet his heel-related fate in these pages.

It's about a bunch of bronze-age warlords killing each other for stupid, selfish reasons. The human characters have little agency, since they are constantly manipulated by the gods, and the gods don't have much more.

Those gods are fascinating, though. I don't know where Homer's ideas end and Dolan's begin, but they are a collection of bizarre otherworldly entities who combine vast power and creativity with relatable broken-family dynamics. The old familiar ideas of Zeus, Hera, Athena, and the rest are injected here with a new life by his directness and sharp descriptions.

I was especially struck by his version of Ares, here portrayed as a brutal, stupid, filthy god of murder and slaughter. I've never seen him shown that way before, but it feels right.

Unfortunately, these fantastic, dizzying flights of fantasy with the gods alternate with dirty, boring scenes of mortals' arguments and feuds. So-and-so kills thus-and-such, whose brother then kills So-and-so. It's only interesting to me as an example of something that ancient people found interesting. I did not detect any timeless insight here, other than that it really sucks to be stabbed in the guts.

Dolan's War Nerd voice is perfect for this material, though. I listen to his podcast, and I could hear his tones in my head throughout the whole thing. It's just like when you listen to an enthusiast reeling off knowledge. It isn't my area of interest, but it's a pleasure to listen to him talk about it for a while.