Talthybius is a haunting and visceral reimagining of the Trojan aftermath. Told through the weary eyes of a messenger caught between glory and guilt, the story dives deep into the moral wreckage that follows victory. The book begins with the fall of Troy and never looks away from the ruin. Each chapter walks through ash and blood, following the Greek soldiers who linger among the dead and enslaved, unraveling their sanity as they prepare to sail home. The prose is poetic yet brutal, a steady rhythm of horror and reflection. It feels like a lament for everything war strips away, honor, innocence, and the very idea of home.

There’s no clean hero here, just men rotting in their own triumph. I liked that honesty. The dialogue is sharp but weary, like every word costs something. The authors paint the world not with beauty but with a kind of grim elegance, and I couldn’t stop reading. What struck me most was how small everything feels. Even the mighty Odysseus seems shrunken, his cunning dulled by time and grief. The narrator’s voice trembles between obedience and revulsion, and I found myself rooting for his silence to break. The violence is constant, but it’s never mindless, it feels like a slow confession.

The writing is so rich and dense that sometimes I had to stop to take it all in. It’s emotional as well. The scenes of cruelty are written with precision, and that makes them harder to stomach. Yet I admired that courage, to write without flinching. The book feels ancient and modern all at once. It asks what it means to be human when the gods have left, and the answer isn’t comforting. By the end, I felt like I had watched something sacred decay. And somehow, I couldn’t look away.

I’d recommend Talthybius to readers who want to feel something raw. If you love stories that peel back myth and stare straight at the people underneath, this is for you. The book belongs to those who appreciate tragedy not as spectacle, but as truth. Reading Talthybius felt a lot like stepping into the moral shadow of The Iliad, but with the raw intimacy and emotional weight of The Song of Achilles stripped of romance and steeped instead in regret and blood.

Pages: 273