The Iliad. The longest piece of crap I've ever read. Not a single character arouses the slightest bit of sympathy or emotion, besides frustration. I kind of liked Hector, until Chapter 16 when he macked Patroclus and then insisted on trying to take his body back to Troy to feed dogs. Don't they have some mooks they can feed to the dogs? You know Achilles is going to be real mad once he stops sulking. And I think he'll stop sulking when he finds out his bud Pat got killed.

Granted, Achilles hasn't done a thing but whine the entire book so far. But everyone makes such a big deal about him, you figure he's got to be able to lay some serious smack down once he takes his medication.

So, up until Chapter 15, Hector is shaping up to be a decent guy. He cares about the fam, and his duty to his country. Then in Chapter 16, he kills Patroclus. Big deal. It's a war. But then "man-killing Hector" (What is he, a hitokiri? That's basically what "hitokiri" means. Hmm, maybe Hec was Shishio in a later life…) decides that Patroclus' body should feed the dogs of Troy. I didn't like Patroclus; he puts on Achilles armor to rally the troops, but he pushes it. I did NOT need a three-page description of everyone Patroclus killed while wearing Achilles' shining armor. But he doesn't deserve to be turned into one big ham-bone. The Greeks were very big on proper burial, and the idea offended them. So they go to get Patroclus' body back.

Chapter 17 is basically a big game of Tug-o-War, with a big long list of who killed who with what near whom and whose head was held on by a flap of skin. Yu-uck! It was like reading a slasher movie novelization. The visualization of the Trojans and the Greeks fighting over someone who's DEAD was really gross. Hence the Tug-o-War thing. The translation title was "Menelaus' Big Day" or something like that. Menelaus did shit. He tried to protect Patroclus' body, and failed miserably. At the end of the chapter, he got the brilliant idea to send someone to Achilles with the news that his pal had bit it, figuring Achilles would come and clean up. And he will. I know what happens, even though I haven't finished it. Summaries of the Iliad are standard in all Greek Mythology books. But does one idea qualify it to be Menelaus' chapter? I guess so. Even though Aeneas got a bigger part in this chapter, and the man's been gypped for the whole stupid book. Too bad he's the only one who lives for more than a couple years (besides Odysseus, but everyone in the ancient world had a massive Odysseus bias anyways)!

So, to wrap up, these chapters could have been a couple paragraphs and then we could have moved on. But SOMEONE decided the book should have tow chapters of random slaughter that advances the plot about an inch. No wonder the book's so fragging long. If Homer really did write this, he wouldn't have been able to get this crap published if he paid for it himself! And the miracles of self-publishing still don't guarantee people will care. And I don't give a damn about this worthless piece of tripe. Now where's my Aeneid?