The Rage of Achilles

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By Terence Hawkins

Publisher Description

"The ancient world feels new again in Terence Hawkins' The Rage of Achilles, which . . . combines a raw, idiomatic retelling of the Iliad with a searching assay of human consciousness. Unique and invigorating."-Louis Bayard, author of The Pale Blue Eye.

In The Rage of Achilles, Terence Hawkins re-imagines the Iliad as a novel and a Trojan War that really happened. Though he adopts Homer's characters, those fabled warriors are no more noble than the scared, tired grunts they command, exhausted and bitter after ten years of brutal Bronze Age warfare. And however savage the fighting, over all hangs the terrible truth that the objective of combat is not glory, but the enslavement of the defeated.

This realism extends to the gods themselves. Informed by Julian Jaynes' groundbreaking theory of the bicameral mind-the basis of HBO's "Westworld"-The Rage of Achilles takes place in a world in which the modern human consciousness struggles painfully to be born. The gods are only the hallucinations of men and women desperate to be told what to do in a terrifying and confusing world.

Told in taut, elegant prose that captures both the Homeric lyric and military grit, The Rage of Achilles is a fast-moving take on literature's foundational epic.

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11 Reviews

2.0

Beth M

Created about 2 months ago

“All right. I can't be nice about this one, people. I simply CANNOT. The gloves are off. What an atrocity. Terrence Hawkins should be barred from setting pen to paper (or sticky fingers to keyboard) ever again. This book is a monument to mediocrity in every conceivable way. Hawkins himself is disgusting. A moron who, between PornHub sprints, it seems one day got the idea to re-write The Iliad as one big gay joke; talking about dicks and farts, yet also pulling off the singular marvelous feat of making the source material look positively pro-feminist in comparison to this amniotic sac filled with fecal matter of a "book". I suppose when No Fap November overlaps with National Novel Writing month, this is the drivel one gets as a result. Hawkins must hate women. Or found all of them in Homer's epic to be nothing more than jokes. Every female character, from Helen to Briseis, is relegated to little more than a voiceless sex kitten/object, only opening their mouth to have a penis put in it. I think Helen says a word or two while masturbating as a means to invoke Aphrodite, which could have been interesting as a concept if someone with skill, a sense of subtlety, or possessed of artistic integrity were writing this. After doing this, she proceeds to ask Aphrodite when she can kill herself, because if a woman isn't gratifying a man, she's only good dead. The same is the case for Andromache, who gets a few lines exchanged between herself and her husband Hector, and then a knife, with Hector telling her to kill herself if he fails in his task of fighting Achilles. (Spoiler alert, he does.) Helen is less often referred to by name and more often as “that big-titted whore”, and few other women are spoken of as anything other than something that a man is meant to put his dick in, is about to put his dick in, or has already put his dick in. Even Athena is removed entirely from the narrative as a means to make sure that Odysseus is the most competent person here. God forbid a woman add to the story at all! The most abhorrent choice (after all of this) was Hawkins' bastardized characterization of Achilles and Patroclus. The former is a raging impotent manchild that punches and fucks his way to satisfaction, and the person most frequently in that path of violence is Patroclus. He, in turn, is nothing more than the love sick play thing of Achilles, permitting himself to be used up for his lover's pleasure. (I thought Madeline Miller’s portrayal of Patroclus in Song of Achilles was pretty bad, but her castration of the true character of the man pales in comparison to what Hawkins has done to him here.) We are given no context as to why this is, and honestly I prefer it that way. As indicated above, Hawkins doesn't do subtlety, and given how often the "relationship" between Achilles and Patroclus is nothing more than a joke to the people around them (including the Trojans) I much prefer that he never tried to give us any insight into the matter. Granted, Hawkins' writing is too flaccid to offer anything meaningful no matter what he attempts. Truth be told, I genuinely think he hates the characters, but mostly he hates Patroclus. He made the man an incompetent leader. Hawkins skipped over all of the good bits of Book 16 (i.e. the fighting and violence. You know, all the things this book is supposed to focus on and emphasize? Also the book where Patroclus dies) only to have Apollo flick the man off of a ladder like a booger (surprised that comparison wasn’t made, honestly) and then to be stuck like a pig several times by Euphorbus and Hector. The audience never gets the opportunity to see him fight, and worst of all, he steals from Patroclus the murder of Sarpedon, instead giving that kill to Odysseus. Which we don’t even get to see. It’s just put in as an aside from Agamemmnon to Odysseus after they literally scoop up Patroclus’ body and sneak away with it back to the Aechean camp, somehow in the middle of battle? Hawkins fails hardest at what he claims he set out to do: make the story of Troy gritty and more violent. To make matters worse, what one might assume to be Hawkins’ own thinly veiled homophobia and racism bleeds like a cut artery through the whimpering attempts at a plot conveyed within these pages. Calling the Trojans “goat fuckers”, and having a soldier say “Peace be upon him” before bending a child over to have his way with him, makes one question a few things about the author. Turning the one gay relationship into a trope beckons further questions. Meanwhile, the only characters that act with any honor and humanity (when the plot serves, otherwise they too are making dick and rape jokes whenever possible) are the original characters created by Hawkins, all of whom possess names that sound more like prescription drugs than might be given to a Greek. Art is subjective, I know. But this book is not art. This book is shit. I cannot believe that anyone who rated this more than two stars isn't a friend of the author, or doesn’t have an arrow lodged in their skull. This reads like a 16 year old boy who found a Troy themed porno and decided to write fanfiction about it, because that’s all this is: fanfiction. Hawkins does not expand on any themes of The Iliad. He doesn’t try to flesh out any of its characters. Nothing. He adds less than nothing to how one might interpret or enjoy the classics, and in this case, has pissed and shit all over one of the most important works in all of Western literature. This is described as “a prose account of the Iliad in modern and sometimes brutal prose.” -- you used ‘prose’ twice there. Good job. -- “Based on the bicameral mind theories of Julian Jaynes—also the conceptual basis for HBO's Westworld—it describes not only an historical Trojan War, but a revolution in human consciousness.” on his website. This, if I may be frank with you, is bullshit. The Iliad does not need “brutal prose.” Anyone who has read it once knows already that it is incredibly brutal and violent. And it does not need to be modernized. As for the bicameral mind theories, a representation of that concept happens in this book, but it doesn’t add to the conversation. At times you think the gods might exist, but then at other times you might think that they don’t. Scenes they are in are written in italics, while gods SPEAK IN ALL CAPS, much like your nana when making posts on Facebook about how Elvis is still alive and performing concerts in Pottsville, Arkansas. It’s insane. It’s lazy. And how dare you invoke HBO’s Westworld as a means to try and carry this absolute dogshit book. “Book.” Normally I would say don’t burn books. But you can burn this one. I’m glad I at least bought this second hand so that I didn’t give the author any money. I also think it is hilariously telling that this book has no introduction. No afterword. And no picture of the author for the beloved audience to associate him with it. Hawkins could have had something here if he’d thrown out 90% of his own contribution, 95% of the dialogue, and 100% of his own characters. Or, he could have utilized ONLY his original characters with the events of The Iliad going on in the background, but that wouldn’t have sold as well, I’m sure. Granted, I don’t think this sold too well either. I’ve read fanfiction with more depth than this. Well and truly. Absolute trash. Do not waste your time! Please read the original in some form or another. There are a multitude of translations from which you can choose. Hell, watch Troy. Even that’s a better adaptation than this trash.”

Bad writing Boring prose Abuse Child abuse Explicit sexual content Homophobia Murder War violence

Nessie

Created 10 months ago

Connor

Created 10 months ago

“Gay sex and child rape in the first 20 pages? Yeah that’s going to get an immediate DNF from me. Now I know why there were so many signed copies left at Barnes & Noble… and now my local thrift store.”

seoyeon

Created 12 months ago