The Odyssey Review

The Odyssey Review 3.5/5 Star I read this after listening to my favorite musical 'EPIC The Musical' and was obssessed with greek mythology and the odyssey story. I was expecting it to have a lot of more details of the fight, of the character's interaction, of the conversation than the musical song but was severely disappointed.A lot of the story have even less detail than the one in the music.Whether it’s the Siren encounter, the giant fight, etc, EPIC the musical made it so much more dramatic and entertaining. While the book by homer felt lackluster. The character in the book also felt more lifeless, as a lot of the agency and role are actually given credit to the gods rather than to the individual itself. It would have been great if the gods instead are the main character, but the gods also didn’t have much personality.The structure or flow of the story is also not linear timeline, but instead start from telemachus waiting for odysseus and then occasionally use flashback or retellign of the story to other character as a way to to do flashback. But this makes it quite confusing to follow.Overall, reading this book made me appreciate the EPIC the musical more, as I find the songs adapted the story really well, it added depth to the character and drama, cut the boring part, add deth to the interesting part, and even modify the story direction so it’s more dramatic (e.g fighting poseidon instead of making sacrifice)What I appreciate in this book is instead the historical value of it. I learned how different the actual book is from most of the retelling that exists. I find the greek culture of hospitality and the gods fascinating. It’s also interesting to see the medium of poems, as Odyssey was meant to be told in poem recitation, and hence the writing style is not very suited to be read, and in fact written in such ways to help memorization, etc.