Troy: Lord of the Silver Bow

The story

The first of Gemmell's three Troy novels opens long before any Greek army lands. Agamemnon, king of Mykene, has been stirred by a prophecy into putting a price on one man's head. That man is Helikaon, a prince of Dardania, the kingdom just north of Troy, and a kinsman of King Priam; later legend would know him as Aeneas. He has made himself rich as a trader and ship-captain on the Great Green, as the novel calls the Mediterranean, and he carries the damage of a cold, frightening boyhood. His oldest friend is Odysseus, king of Ithaka: ugly, shrewd and famous across the sea for stories that are mostly untrue.

Two other lives run alongside his. Andromache, daughter of the king of Thebe Under Plakos, has been a priestess on Thera and is now being sent to Troy to marry Priam's son Hektor, a match she did not choose. She is quick-tongued, a good shot with a bow and bad at deference, which Priam's crowded and quarrelsome household is not ready for. Argurios is a Mykene warrior whose deeds are told in every port. Under the new king his loyalty counts for less than it did, and the story carries him east to Troy, a city he has been raised to regard as the enemy.

Around them Gemmell builds a large cast: Xander, a twelve-year-old boy who sees much of the action from its edges; Gershom, an Egyptian fugitive pulled out of the sea; Priam's shy daughter Laodike; a hired assassin; and a ruthless Mykene commander, Kolanos. Helikaon's new warship, the Xanthos, far larger than any ordinary ship, supplies the sea-fights.

The war itself has not begun. The book is about the pressures that will start it: a king's appetite for Troy's wealth, rivalries inside Priam's palace, and prophecies that powerful men are trying either to fulfil or to prevent. There are oracles and there is Kassandra's second sight, but no gods take the field, and the novel reads as historical fiction with a faint edge of the uncanny.

Reading notes

This was Gemmell's first historical series since Lion of Macedon and Dark Prince, and it is the easiest of his books to hand to someone who does not read fantasy. He uses Greek rather than Latin spellings (Hektor, Mykene, Ithaka), invents freely around Homer, and gives the lead to Aeneas, a secondary figure in the Iliad, which leaves him room to build his own hero. The instincts are the ones that drive the Drenai books: a soldier's code, loyalty tested against self-interest, and violence that costs the people who use it. Argurios, the man forced to rethink everything he was raised to believe, is the character reviewers tend to single out.

It has weaknesses. The first half is slow while ten or so viewpoints are set up, and the book is plainly the opening of a trilogy rather than a complete story. Andromache's independence can read as modern rather than Bronze Age, a complaint more than one reviewer has made. Once the pieces are in place the second half moves fast, and the closing sequence is Gemmell writing action at full stretch. Stella Gemmell, who researched for him, worked with him on the whole trilogy.

A sensible first Gemmell for readers of historical adventure, and a pleasant surprise for Drenai readers who have never tried his history.