it's a good book. overhyped? kinda—but the author deserves the hype because TEN WHOLE YEARS TO WRITE THIS SINGLE BOOK? i admire her effort. and i feel like i can see her hard work in the words too.
it must've been a harrowing task to rewrite the entire illiad within 300 pages lol. and even as someone who has never read that behemoth of an epic, this book is perfectly readable. the symbolism of achilles chasing hector in his armor, who looks like achilles, is something i just realised and am trying to wrap my head around (edit 2025: i didn't know wtf i meant by this at first but i think i was trying to say that achilles might've thought like he was also killing a version of himself coz he felt responsible for patroclus' death in some way). the ending was uhh abrupt. i wanted to see things from achilles' point of view tbh. but the thing that made me shed a tear was patroclus recounting his memories of achilles to thetis. that was the real tearjerker—could really feel the grief through the words. but it really does speak to madeline miller's writing skill that i understood every conflict. all-in-all, it's a very good book. deserves to be called a modern classic, in my opinion.
