Iliad: the Reboot by Keith Tokash

Let me begin this review of Iliad: the Reboot by Keith Tokash by saying how I grew up reading Greek myths filled with larger than life heroes, aloof gods, and beasts of epic proportions. Imagine my surprise when a copy of Tokash’s satirical novel fell into my lap. This is how every myth should be retold. I want to Iliad reboot everything: Siddhartha, the Bible, the Kama Sutra. “Iliad reboot” it all!

The Skinny on the Illiad Reboot

So here’s the premise. Gelios, the unluckiest Greek soldier to ever live is overheard by agents of Menelaus, king of Sparta, when he says something disparaging about Helen, the king’s wife. To avoid punishment, Gelios’ cousin an up-and-coming poet, Pelos (later to have the penname Homer) steps in. Pelos is conscripted to write an epic about the Trojan war (the Iliad) and Gelios is to be his personal guard. Neither is very happy with the situation.

The pair travel to Troy with the Greek army to get back Helen, who has been stolen by Paris. It turns out that Helen isn’t even that beautiful, nor is she all that important to Menelaus. This whole fiasco of waging war is to save face over having one fat tyrant mak off with another fat tyrant’s “property.” Toxic masculinity at it’s finest, if that can even be a thing.

Fake News at its Finest

While Pelos tries to write his magnum opus to appease his king and the military leaders, he finds way too many writers in the ink crock. Everyone wants to be depicted as perfect, 12-pack abs and all when they are everything but fit and godly. The divine Achilles is a fat drunk 20 years past his prime. That whole thing about his mom dipping him in a pool to make him invincible is creative license. Agamemnon is a blowhard who just wants to stab people with his sword and uses his cuckold brother Menelaus as an excuse to be a big war hero. And the Trojan Horse was just a convenient ending to an epic poem about a cluster of a war that no one could ever win, especially the Greeks.

Iliad: Reboot is a treasure of a book. I loved every page. The characters are well-written and incredibly expressive. It’s not easy to write a large ensemble cast with such depth and individually. Tokash pulls it off and makes it look effortless. I just love the idea of taking something so well known as the Iliad and retelling it from behind the scenes. If we had this type of perspective for every historical event that’s been written, we would see how history is not only written by the victors but how they tweak it to make themselves look windblown and flawless.