After a fairly slow, goo-ey start, the story evolves into a gripping, vivid tale. True to the source material with understandable deviations, it also is a great educational piece on  the myth. Its central failing, however, is that the author does not manage to make the reader fall in love with the protagonist. Patroclus remains a whiny, spineless wet blanket, which makes it not only annoying to follow his every obsessive thought, but also makes it unbelievable why the half-god Achilles would take an interest in him. His page-long kitchy admirings of Achilles just take a bit too much space in what is originally a violent, large-scale, vicious epic. This serious flaw partly spoils an otherwise exceptional read. Also, funny that a book advertised on its queer representation only includes female characters that are complete victims to their fate, either devoid of agency or exoticised femmes fatales. Crushing failure of the Bechdel test, but maybe the author could only push the original myth so far before diluting the original story.