I have been a fan of Greek mythology since my early childhood. However memories of it faded over last few years. "Helen of Troy" definitely revived my interest in the subject and in historical fiction in general.

There were many things that I loved about the book. The story of Helen was comprehensive and meticulously researched. I know for sure George stayed very close to the sources and the book was historically correct (well, as much as a book about mythical characters can be historically corr More...

As an avid reader, it's not very often that you come across a book that immediately finds a spot on the top shelf of your bookcase. Well, Helen of Troy has earned that right, without a doubt. This book is sheer perfection in so many ways a simple review cannot express.

The author did a beautiful job of telling the story of Helen of Sparta, later Helen of Troy from a perspective which seamlessly submerges you into the Trojan War. She weaved in all the right characters, events and emotions and wra More...

Homer gaves us the story of the end of the Trojan War and the great tale of what happened to the Odyssey when it lost its way. There are numerous tales of the greatest warriors that fought the war and endless stories of the watching gods. Margaret George tells a different story. It is the story of Helen and how she went from being Helen, Queen of Sparta to Helen of Troy. And the story is told through her eyes. From her childhood when she strained against her restraints and resented the fact that More...

Although this latest historical fiction novel by Margaret George is not quite up to her first two efforts, “The Autobiography of Henry VIII” and “The Memoirs of Cleopatra,” she still does a very good job of making the mythical figure of Helen of Troy into a real, flesh-and-blood woman of her time that we can identify with.

Unlike other fictional re-tellings of Helen’s story which portray her as selfish and conceited or a vapid non-entity, George does her best to make Helen a sympathetic figure, w More...

"Was this face that launched a thousand ships?" (Dr. Faustus, Christopher Marlowe). Ah, the enigma of Helen of Troy. The men of ancient times are as captivated by Helen as we are today. Helen of Troy has been portrayed in many different lights and from many different angles. George chooses to paint a picture of an overly protected, naiive woman who's fate was simply a toy to Aphrodite.

I struggeld with what to rate it. I really enjoyed The Memoirs of Cleopatra, as it gripped me from page one. I More...

It is a story that has been told a hundred different ways and a story one never tires of and Margaret George does a masterful job of retelling in her book Helen of Troy told through Helen's eyes. Often Helen is an elusive creature whose only characteristics is her great beauty and her faithlessness to her first husband, Menalaus.

Helen's story begins in her childhood in Sparta where as a princess she is kept at home or hidden behind veils. As a child a seer foretells that she will bring destructi More...

Maybe this book deserves more than just 2 stars, since it is nicely written (altough it didn't blow my mind either) and it seems to be well researched. It's a good historical fiction, or better: It's good fiction. But what disturbed me about this book was the fact that it was just to mythological. The author let the old greek gods play a big role in this book, meaning that they directly influence the decisions of the characters and therefore don't really give them a choice. Of course, others mig More...

Last year, a friend recommended the book Gone with the Wind. I balked at the idea, at the mere size of it. But I read it, because I trust her book choices with every fiber of my being. And I loved it. Never had I read a single book that was as epic, as sweeping, as Gone with the Wind. Until now. My blogger friend Ashley gave it a phenomenal review, and it turns out that Helen of Troy had been sitting in my bookcase all this time. I had bought it at a used bookstore about two years ago. WEIRD! Ba More...

It's not like we don't know what's going to happen: Menelaus, Paris, Troy, the horse. It's in the how and the why that Margaret George spins an engrossing tale. What is it like to have "the face that launched a thousand ships"? To be perhaps the most famous adultress in history? To be a "survivor" (as Hector calls Helen) in the midst of terrible destruction? Homer leaves much about Helen to be read between the lines, and Margaret George takes up the challenge. She imagines a Helen who is compete More...

Greek mythology, or mythology, in general, is and will always be one of my great loves. (I say this at the risk of sounding completely demented) The story of Helen and the fall of Troy was never my most favourite myth but recently, I started to gravitate towards it and am very fascinated with many of the secondary characters involved. I was pleased to read that George had included them with sufficient backstory: Cassandra, Clytemnestra, Aphrodite, Athena, Electra, and Orestes.

What was really en More...

I finally conquered Troy!


Yesterday, before I read the last page of the book and the afterwords by the author, I was ready to rant and rave about how selfish and vapid Helen was and how ridiculous everyone seemed with their claims of seeing the future and being visited by gods every other day....then I learned that it's a good possibility that she never existed and is simply a myth. How can I get self-righteous with a myth?

But seriously, I couldn't feel any sympathy for Helen and Paris. They shou More...

What an entertaining version of the story of the Trojan War! This book is written in first person and Helen is narrating the story of her life. She is a very caring, sympathetic and innocent character in this book because we are hearing the story from her side. The writing is so fantastic you are immediately pulled in and can’t wait to read more to see what happens (even though you know the end of the story).

Helen is raised as a very sheltered young girl and is forbidden to use a mirror lest she More...

I had high expectations, having enjoyed George's Cleopatra book so much. This book didn't quite hit the same mark, but it was still a good read. George did a good job of creating a 'real' background for this most famous myth. It was hard, though, not to imagine Brad Pitt as Achilles as I read!

As always, George's historical details are accurate. Of course, there is much debate around this tale, but wherever possible George's portrayal concurs with the prevailing academic theories.

I seem to have a different reaction than many others to this book. For them, the first 300 pages dragged. However, I definitely preferred the first half to the second. I expect a number of things led to my reaction. First, the story is certainly less depressing in the first half. The latter portion is full of death and war and disappointment. Second, the whole book is from Helen’s point of view and she was a genuine participant in the earlier sections. During the war Helen could not really be a More...

Helen of Troy and King Arthur of Camelot. Both have become legends. Were they real or are they myths?
Margaret George captivated me with her previous masterpiece, The Memoirs of Cleopatra. This offering about a woman made infamous by her beauty does not disappoint. George creates Sparta and Troy and the women who made love and the men who made war with irresistible charm. The reader is left with a sense of where a real Helen may have come from. George recounts the innocence of a childhood where H More...

As expected, lyrical prose, beautiful perspective, and unwavering voice. Also as expected, over-the-top, sometimes cheesy, and trying to pull too many myths together at once. If you're into women's historical fiction, though, go for it.

I love Greek mythology and think the fall of Troy is easily one of the most powerful myths around. Prior to reading this I would never have believed that anyone could tell it in such a way as to make it utterly boring, but sadly Margaret George has proved me wrong.

Telling the story of Helen of Troy, the face that started it all, it's clear that Ms George put in rather a lot of research. It's just a shame that, while remembering to add in details like what sort of cups people might have drunk fro More...

I can't decide whether to give this 2 or 3 stars. I will say that while I did not lovvveee it, it is between good/ok.

Don't get me wrong, Margaret George did a lot of good work to write this page turning book about the tragedy of Troy, and while I wanted to keep reading the book, I did not feel any real emotion towards the characters' mishaps. It's like Titanic, we know how the story ends, but if compelling enough we feel for the characters and are saddened when things go wrong. I did not feel m More...

I feel like this book was too similar to the Troy motion picture that came out earlier. There were differences in the plot, to be sure, but the characters felt the same. I feel like whatever regard or disregard I had for the characters after seeing the movie, I had the same feelings for them in this book. And that's unfortunate because I'd like to get other perspectives. I'd like to see Helen with a little more outward strength (as opposed to just inner strength). I'd like to see Paris a little More...

Just once I'd like to read a version of Helen where she's actually portrayed as a Spartan queen, and all that implies. While this take is more traditional in portraying her as the lovestruck tool of the gods, Helen proves she's made of sterner stuff than most versions would portray her. I was a bit put-off at first by how slowly the book starts, but the build-up is worth it as a fully three-dimensional character study of some of Homer's most enduring characters. As a romance novel, this is a sol More...

I'm torn on how to review this and whether I should give it 3* or 4* - therefore consider this one a 3.5*.

Margaret George is a compelling author - she gives detailed accounts but still manages to make the writing flow and you can really "hear" her characters. While she describes things so you can easily envision them yourself she doesnt get so bogged down in the minutae that you want to skim sections. This book was no exception.

Helen, Paris, Menelaus, Hector, Priam, Agamemnon, Gelanor, even Herm More...

Okay, Margaret George is an extremely "wordy" author. She likes adjectives and she likes to use them a lot. I am a simple woman, if the day is hot then I don't want to hear about how the sweat drops slide down your face.
Also, I think she got bored in the last 100 pages because Helen just kind of summarizes things and then the book is over.
Also, I hate Helen of Troy. If I was to write a fiction book about a fiction woman I would make Helen of Troy a power house. I don't CARE that Homer didn't wri More...

This book is a beautiful example of historical FICTION. I boldly capitalize the word ‘fiction’ because the original story of Troy and its long siege per se is a fictitious yarn, loosely based on events whose historicity has yet to be fully proven. The famous narrative ‘Iliad’ has become the intrinsic part of human cultural heritage and in its turn has given birth to a number of artistic interpretations. Most of the spin-offs (novels, paintings, poems, movies, plays) mainly tell the story of warr More...

I am a big fan of historical fiction and of classical studies, and this one truly surprised me. I remember one of my higher level greek classes, where we read remains of ostraka, fragments of vases, and the voices from the past seemed to come alive as we unraveled history. Here, in a very different way, Helen gets a voice. We learn of her childhood, the stories surrounding her birth, her old family, her new one... and the resilience of a woman who learns to live with her own history. I applaud t More...

I began this book as an Audiobook, and the way in which the narrator read was the book was wonderfully bewitching. I was transfixed. Sadly, I had to return the Audiobook before finishing it, and so I continued via the book because I was interested in the story. I really liked the Helen that readers meet in the first part of the book, the part that talks about her time growing up in Sparta. My interest in Helen waned through the continuing pages though, never to return to its original level of en More...

Oh FFS!!!! Margaret George is one of my favorites but with this book she has effectively turned me off mythology for quite a while. I couldn't care less who died and who lived. Maybe besides Helen and Paris, whom I hated almost from their first encounter. What a pathetic, weak willed and pitiful couple! (A longer review to come soon.)

My first introduction to the story of Helen of Troy was a movie by that name starring Rosanna Podesta. It came out when I was a child, sometime in the '50s and it wound up on the bill at the Princess Theater on a Saturday matinee.

I used to love to go to the Princess Theater on Saturday afternoons to sit in the dark and drift away into another time and place. The Princess was my time machine and, in it, I made the trip to ancient Sparta and Troy.

That was an epic movie in the era of epic movies l More...

Everyone knows the infamous saga of Helen of Troy. How her startling, almost other-worldly beauty was the cause of a war that killed thousands of Greeks and leveled a glorious city. It's a tragic tale, but one Margaret George has effortlessly created a world around.

I enjoyed the first half of this book immensely. Helen's sheltered childhood that was entwined around the mystery of her birth was fascinating and rich. However, once she arrives at Troy, we all know how the story ends and the endles More...