This concept could have soared - instead it fizzled and crashed an burned.

The Story of Troy - Hector, Paris and even the introduction of Hera, Aphrodite and Athena could not save this muddled mess. It came off less like a gorgeous Scifi version of a beloved and mystifying Greek tale and more like the ramblings of a crazed mathematician writing a scifi story in a language not yet invented.

( )

It was then that Hera produced the apple. Its brightness was such that everything around it looked dimmer, duller, drained of succulence. “What a prize,” she said softly, bitterly. “No one wants the damn thing, except being uncrowned by its light is even worse. Someone has to claim it.”

“Choose by random number generator?” Paris said, because someone had to.

“As if anything is truly random in the stories we write for ourselves,” Athena said.

What if Paris was a different kind of fool? This author has set him down here in a high tech troy shimmering in alternate story lines and new paths. Some things never change though: Even the gods cannot escape Fate.

I totally, completely loved this. It reminded me a lot of [b:The Museum and the Music Box|24467232|The Museum and the Music Box|Noah Keller|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1421087091s/24467232.jpg|44060116] in that it is, once again, more the brush strokes around the story than the story itself. As you can see from other reviews, your mileage may vary. I myself will be bumping [b:Conservation of Shadows|17131859|Conservation of Shadows|Yoon Ha Lee|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1362960323s/17131859.jpg|23532481] up a bit on my TBR list.

Free online from Tor: http://www.tor.com/2015/10/14/variations-on-an-apple-yoon-ha-lee/ ( )

It smelled of diesel hearts and drudgery and overcrowded colonies; of battery acid gone bad and bromides and foundered courtships. Intoxicating, yes, but in the way of verses etched unwanted upon the spirit’s cracked windows.

The imagery and descriptions in this are gorgeous. ( )

You think you know how this story ends.

You don't. But it will still hurt. ( )

Now this... is a strange one. A bizarre remix of the Iliad set in a futuristic, crumbling city; a vision of the world in which the apple never made it to Helen; a story that is both incredibly ancient and fiercely original. Paris is, indeed, entranced by the fairest of the fair - but here he's in love with the personification of Ilion (Troy) itself. He is not a shepherd but a philosopher of numbers, dreaming of equations and calculus which will better allow him to understand the city he adores. Here nothing - not even the apple - is beautiful; the story unfolds in a great bleak vacuum. Perhaps Ilion is on another planet, or a space-station. This dizzying combination of sci-fi and myth is definitely clever, revelling in ideas as if written on a high, but sometimes it's just that little bit too clever to be entirely comprehensible. ( )