I seem to be caught in a streak of three star reads lately. To paraphrase something I said to a friend earlier, this is one of those "three stars usually means a decent read, but when you expect to LOVE a book, giving three stars feels more disappointing and negative than it normally does" books. This was a poetic book, but I'm not a poetry fan. I was excited to read about the Trojan War, one of the greatest stories ever told, but we don't get to see much of it. Most of the war passes "off screen" (literally - somehow ten years passes in the space of a handful of pages), many of the notable characters from the story never make it in or do so only briefly (Helen, Priam), and instead we get to spend most of the Trojan War in Achilles' tent or wandering around the camp seeing through Patroclus' adoring puppy-dog eyes. 
 The author chose to make the Trojan War a framing device for this great Romance For The Ages, which is fine. But if the romance is going to be the focal point, the characterization has to be on point, and it kind of wasn't for me. I appreciate that Patroclus and Achilles both seemed to feel great passion and love because that's how they were written, but I never engaged with it. Patroclus sounds like a lovestruck teenager throughout (and while that worked for the first part, when he was actually a teenager, it got old by the time they were grown men and close to thirty years old!) and Achilles is flat in his perfection. Honestly, I responded way more to the emotional relationship between Patroclus and Briseis than I ever did to Patroclus and Achilles. 
 However, if this author ever decides to give the same treatment to the Odyssey as she did to the Iliad, I'll be first in line. Odysseus was wonderful! And Thetis was my favorite character overall. I love when authors are brave enough to make gods truly alien and inhuman, instead of just "tall humans who shoot lightning" or whatever. 
 2016 reading challenge: historical fiction set before 1900