The Shadow of Troy (Book Five of Empires of Bronze) by Gordon Doherty

Overall Rating: ***** (5 stars)

The Shadow of Troy is the fifth volume of Empires of Bronze, Gordon Doherty’s ongoing historical fiction series set in the ancient Hittite Empire. This volume is a watershed for the series. Everything that has gone before now collides with one of the world’s great narratives: the story of the Trojan War.

The Shadow of Troy continues to follow Hattu, now king of the Hittites. In the previous novel, The Crimson Throne, we learned how Hattu defeated his wicked nephew and seized the Hittite throne, as a divine prophecy had long predicted he would. Unfortunately, the struggle decimated the Hittite army, and the once-powerful kingdom is barely able to defend its own borders. Worse, climate change and the movements of barbarians beyond the edges of civilization are beginning to threaten every great kingdom in the Bronze Age world.

It is at this moment that King Hattu receives a desperate cry for aid from an ancient Hittite vassal, the city of Troy. A Trojan prince has offended the powerful kings of the Ahhiyawans across the sea, abducting one of their wives and bringing her back to Troy. Long greedy for Troy’s wealth, the Ahhiyawans have come across the sea with a thousand ships, and the Trojans have called for their Hittite overlords to defend them.

Hattu has no army to spare, but he is honor-bound to answer . . . so he comes alone, with no one to support him but his son and heir Tudha, along with a few of his veteran comrades-in-arms. He may not have an army, he may not have much hope left, but he has decades of experience as a warrior and captain in one bitter struggle after another. The Ahhiyawans will not be wise to take him lightly!

Throughout this series, Mr. Doherty has consistently done a good job of working with what few original sources are available to us. In this story, he has nothing less than the Iliad to work with, along with the other works of the so-called Trojan Cycle. In The Shadow of Troy he does masterful work, weaving together familiar bits of myth and heroic narrative while telling the story from a foreign (that is, Hittite) perspective. For example, if you’re familiar with the Iliad, you’ll recognize a lot of very specific bits of action in the battle scenes.

The novel does interesting things with the mysteries of the narrative. Why did the Achaeans come to attack Troy – was it truly over something as simple as an unfaithful wife? Troy was almost certainly a Hittite vassal state, and in this story the Hittite king comes to support Troy in the war . . . so why does the Iliad say absolutely nothing about the Hittites? What was really going on with the Trojan Horse, and the final fall of the city?

Most of all, Mr. Doherty does something remarkable with the preordained conclusion of the story. Throughout the series King Hattu has never lost a war, even if his victories have come at terrible cost. He is clearly the hero of this story . . . and yet it’s a foregone conclusion that Troy will fall in the end. How The Shadow of Troy ties up all these threads is a treat to watch, even (or especially) if you’re already familiar with the Greek sources.

Mechanically, the novel works on several levels. The plot is tight, even though it has a few more twists and reversals than usual. There’s more moral ambiguity in this story than in the previous volumes – there are brave heroes and foul villains, but for once it’s not always clear which is which. There’s a superb subplot involving Hattu and his son, in which both characters get plenty of development as sympathetic protagonists. The prose style is very clean, with no copy-editing or other errors to pull me out of the narrative. In all, a very workmanlike job.

Readers should be aware, as always, that the story is set in a brutal and violent time. Descriptions of human cruelty and violence are common and very explicit.

I very much enjoyed The Shadow of Troy. I understand there will be one more book in the series, and I’m very much looking forward to seeing what Mr. Doherty does to wrap this story up. Very strongly recommended – an action-packed and bloody retelling of the Trojan cycle and what comes afterward.