Stephen Fry's Heroes: An Epic Story of Courage and Inspiration

B.A - London: Once you start reading this book, you don't want to put it down. Stephen Fry has retold these myths with todays standards.

United Kingdom on Oct 24, 2023

RockApe: Stephen makes it a joy to read

United Kingdom on Oct 16, 2023

John: The best mythology retelling ever5stars

United States on Jul 30, 2023

bfranza: It turns out some of the Greek Heroes were kinda lame, and only got things done because their women.

United States on Jun 23, 2023

sashaknits: Having enjoyed Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold so much, I had high hopes for the 2nd volume and was not disappointed. Stephen Fry does an amazing job of making the Greek myths relatable to a modern audience whilst preserving what makes them mythic and epic, inspirational and cautionary, funny and tragic. As per last time, I had both the audiobook and Kindle versions, listening mainly to the narration and reading a few pages here and there when it was more convenient.

My knowledge of characters such as Heracles, Jason, Theseus, Oedipus, Icarus etc was fairly minimal so I learned a lot of interesting detail about them all and met some characters I'd never heard of. I really appreciated the author's additional notes on how various sources contradict each other on timelines and which supporting characters were (or weren't) involved in certain events. It's the nature of such myths to have become a little muddled over so many centuries, and masterfully done to thread them together in a way that makes a reasonable amount of sense to a modern reader.

The footnotes were yet again a rich vein of information regarding how more words, phrases and concepts have survived into...

United Kingdom on May 26, 2023

History guy: Really enjoy the way Stephen Fry retells the myths and puts his twist on it. Top stuff.

Spain on May 14, 2023

Chuck W.: Lots of details and in-depth story lines. An enjoyable read with lots of laughs.

United States on Apr 18, 2023

Max: Great

Canada on Feb 26, 2023

S. M.Silver: Though my first degrees were in history, my exposure to the Greek myths was so poorly conducted in university that I happily ignored them for the following half century or so. Simply on the strength of having seen Mr. Fry on television led me to purchase the first book in his trilogy; that happy outcome led to getting this one. He faced a challenge, what with the various perspectives on the myths which make building a unified whole difficult. But he succeeds even when that unification has to be left, at least in part, undone. More than that, he makes the myths come alive - this is both entertaining and educational. As a Westerner, my values, to at least some degree, were shaped by the Greeks - for good or ill, these ideas about justice and courage and all the rest are still with us. And, beyond all that, this is a damned good read. And, yes, I purchased the third book. Highly recommended.

United States on Jul 31, 2021

Jeff: If you are reading this you probably read Mythos first and know whether or not Heroes is for you. I personally loved mythos and remember vaguely wondering why the stories of the heroes weren’t included. It was a complaint I had that I didn’t think much about as the book was already a fairly good length and had a focused structure I enjoyed.

I was pleasantly surprised when I saw the sequel had released and addressed my question. One of the reasons I picked up Mythos is that it appealed to me as a one off read rather than a drawn out series, so of course it turns out a trilogy was planned all along and I simply wasn’t paying attention.

I don’t think these books are written for those who don’t already have an interest in mythology. They don’t shy away from the sometimes awkward or inconsistent points in the tales but Fry does a good job of always making sure the story is the star. My biggest complaint about the myths is one that I’m sure will have some rolling their eyes. Reading them back to back is a little depressing given that almost all of the stories end so tragically. Unlike in mythos the stars of this book are very human and suffer fates the...

United States on Jun 17, 2021