I enjoy a good story about Troy, the Trojan War, and everything adjacent to it, but I did not particularly enjoy this take. I don’t know if it was just the writing style or tone, but something felt completely off while reading this book. It’s not a 1 Star but it’s definitely not a 3 Star read.

Author Julia Kindt is a Professor of Ancient History at the University of Sydney (among other roles and distinctions), and in her Preface to The Trojan Horse and Other Stories she writes that this is meant to be an examination of animal-based stories from antiquity as “part of a larger endeavour to reveal some of the foundations on which Western humanism rests”, and with the “general reader” in mind. And as interesting as that sounded to me, this general reader didn’t get much out of this. Each chapter read like one of my university essays — an introduction that sums up what is to come, a body that contains many ideas and supporting references, followed by a summarising conclusion — and while the information wasn’t over my head, this felt too academically-formatted to satisfy my general-interest curiosity, and too basic to satisfy an academic audience. There were fewer classical animal stories than I expected, and despite the circling and summarising and drawing together of disparate threads, I never really understood the overall thesis here. I was often bored. I appreciate the effort and expertise that went into this, but it just wasn’t for me.