The story

Assumes you have read the first two Troy novels; the set-up reveals how Shield of Thunder ends.

The war has come. Forces loyal to Agamemnon are massing on the plain before Troy, and the Mykene king, who needs the city's wealth to pay for the armies that hold his conquests, means to take it whatever the cost. Odysseus is bound to Agamemnon's side against his will, and knows that he will soon be fighting men he once called friends.

Inside the walls Priam is ailing, bitter and losing his hold on his own mind. The defence rests more and more on two men: Hektor, the king's favourite son and the city's great soldier, and Helikaon, who now has a personal reason to hate the Mykene and fights his war at sea from the Xanthos. Troy needs tin to make bronze, and an early thread follows a long voyage west to fetch it, with Andromache and Priam's prophetic daughter Kassandra aboard. Gershom, the Egyptian who has become Helikaon's closest friend, finds that Kassandra's visions concern him too. Kalliades and Banokles, now in Troy's service, carry the ordinary soldier's view of the siege.

Gemmell's version keeps rearranging the familiar story. Helen is plain and kind rather than a legendary beauty, Agamemnon is a predator after treasure rather than a wronged brother, and the heroes of both sides are people with debts, families and doubts. The book knows how the legend ends, and its characters half-know it too, which gives the siege chapters a steady pressure that has little to do with suspense.

David Gemmell had written about 70,000 words when he died in July 2006. Stella Gemmell, who had researched and edited his work for years, wrote the rest from his chapter plan, and the novel was published in 2007 under both their names.

Reading notes

The question most readers bring to Fall of Kings is whether they can see the join. Reviewers have mostly struggled to find it. Stella Gemmell prepared by rereading his battle scenes and taking them apart to see how they worked, and the second half keeps his pace, his short, hard fights and his interest in what courage costs. The experience led to a writing career of her own: her first solo novel, The City, followed in 2013.

As an ending it is bleak, crowded and satisfying. For many readers the last third, with its siege set pieces, is the strongest stretch of the trilogy, and Kalliades and Banokles earn their place at the centre. The weaknesses are structural. Helikaon, the trilogy's hero, drifts towards the margins in the final stretch, the Gershom thread feels attached rather than woven in, and there is a fair case that the material would have fitted two books rather than three.

Read it last, after the other two; it resolves their threads and will spoil them if read first. It is also the natural place to finish reading Gemmell, since it was the book on his desk when he died.