From the Bookshelf of Bookmarks Subscribers …

The prolific Brit Peter Ackroyd has built his reputation on eclectic, wide-ranging projects that include a dozen novels (such as The Lambs of London, HHHH Sept/Oct 2006) and biographies of Shakespeare, William Blake, Chaucer, and the city of London, among others. The Fall of Troy is a meditation on the siren song of history and a compact, disarming (if ultimately dark) character sketch that explores the limits of belief. The author displays his wit and polymathic interests here, though he cuts t

The prolific Brit Peter Ackroyd has built his reputation on eclectic, wide-ranging projects that include a dozen novels (such as The Lambs of London, HHHH Sept/Oct 2006) and biographies of Shakespeare, William Blake, Chaucer, and the city of London, among others. The Fall of Troy is a meditation on the siren song of history and a compact, disarming (if ultimately dark) character sketch that explores the limits of belief. The author displays his wit and polymathic interests here, though he cuts the subject so close to the bone that the work "sometimes has a tinny, hollow quality" (New York Times). The San Antonio Express-News also accused Ackroyd of soap-opera twists. Readers may be left wanting more, but what Ackroyd offers is, for the most part, an interesting premise done with aplomb.

This is an excerpt from a review published in Bookmarks magazine.