El's Reviews > Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes

This is a book I've had sitting on my shelves for a long time, and one I've flipped through several times to look up references from other books, titles, movies. I was finally encouraged to read the entire thing from having read Jesmyn Ward's Salvage the Bones, in which the 14-year-old protagonist reads Mythology and makes comparisons to her own life, comparisons based mainly on the story of Jason and Medea. (One of my own personal favorites, as well, because Medea is a wickedly delicious character on her own.)

The collection here is decent enough, starting out with brief descriptions of the more popular gods/goddesses, and heroes, creation stories, etc. I was a bit disappointed at this point, just because everything felt too brief; I wanted more meat.

I got the meat a little later on, as Hamilton goes into more detail in some of the more familiar stories, such as Jason's quest for the Golden Fleece, Hercules and his Labors, and others. These chapters are great because it allows people who don't want to read some of those really old dead guys like Homer or Apollonius of Rhodes a chance to know what their stories were really about. Here be summaries of The Iliad, The Odyssey, The Voyage of Argo, and The Aeneid, all of which are fantastic stories on their own. I would prefer people take the time to read each of them in their entirety, but since I'm not the boss of people, I agree that Hamilton's summaries are definitely better than nothing. These are fantastic stories.

I have not read Ovid on my own yet, and Hamilton has inspired me to finally get around to him.

Overall, I feel this is a great reference and wonderful resource to have on hand. It's especially great if one doesn't know anything about these stories already, because then it's all fresh and new and exciting, the way life should be. For the rest of us, all jaded and cynical and shit, the stories are still good, but familiar. Also, those of us who have read a lot over the years recognize a lot of the stories from other things we've read, even if the source material was not explicitly named. There can be moments of revelations when we read, similar to when we recognize some piece of Shakespeare in something else we're reading. Making connections in literature is fun.

Only complaint is, really (and you knew I had some, because I am me), that there is way too much focus on Greek and Roman gods and heroes. There's a whole other world of mythology out there! While the Greeks and the Romans are the most familiar to most of us, there are all these other lovely stories that aren't shared here. Hamilton does spend a little time at the end talking about the Norse folk, and that's fine and all, but I feel there was a lost opportunity. Unless Hamilton has a sequel out there that I'm not familiar with, in which case, hook me up.