I love Greek mythology in every form it comes in. Fictional retellings, documentaries, scholarly work, anything I can get my hands on. The whole series sat on my shelves for a long time, but back then not every volume was out yet, and some of them had no audiobook. So, I waited. Then I forgot about them entirely, until I rediscovered them in my local bookshop and decided they would be next. I started here, with “Mythos”, and it turned out to be a genuine pleasure.

„No one loves and quarrels, desires and deceives as boldly or brilliantly as Greek gods and goddesses. In Stephen Fry’s vivid retelling, we gaze in wonder as wise Athena is born from the cracking open of the great head of Zeus and follow doomed Persephone into the dark and lonely realm of the Underworld. We shiver in fear when Pandora opens her jar of evil torments and watch with joy as the legendary love affair between Eros and Psyche unfolds. Mythos captures these extraordinary myths for our modern age – in all their dazzling and deeply human relevance.“

Blurb

Fry is a brilliant writer and an equally brilliant narrator. His accents, his sense of timing, his willingness to dramatize a scene rather than merely recite it, all of it makes the audiobook far more engaging than the text alone could ever be. Listening to it felt like school again, but only the good parts, the ones I actually looked forward to. I knew almost every story and every twist going in, and it did not matter in the slightest. Fry finds the small details, the odd asides, the things that never made it into the standard versions, and those were the real reward.

The prose is comfortable in the best sense of the word. It carries you along without ever demanding that you fight it. Even the footnotes, which in most books are a nuisance in audio form, work beautifully here. Fry reads them as though he leaned over to tell you something in confidence. The afterword ran a little long for my taste, but that is a minor complaint against everything else.

I also appreciate the decision to split the material across separate volumes: the gods here, the heroes elsewhere, the great cycles later. It gives each book room to breathe. The moment I finished this one, I started “Heroes”, and I suspect I will read the series straight through rather than putting other books in between. We will see.

This is a fantastic book, and by all appearances a fantastic series, for anyone drawn to Greek mythology. It makes no difference whether you know it all already or are coming to it for the first time. Everything is clear, everything is understandable, and nobody is left behind. A five-star read, and I am very much looking forward to the next one.

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

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