Fall of Kings

In this last installment of David Gemmell's Trojan trilogy (following Troy: Shield of Thunder), Helen is a plain, mousy woman whose beauty is entirely of the inner sort, and Hektor is a cuckold left raising another man's son. Agamemnon is depicted as a rapacious predator seeking the riches of Troy to support the armies he needs to hold the territories he has conquered, and Priam a shadow of his former glory, brought low by an Alzheimer's-like disease. Strong characterizations and sturdy plotting evoke the horror of the conflict, and the story's mythic power. David Gemmell left the novel uncompleted upon his untimely death in 2006, but his wife, Stella, who did most of his research, has brought the books to a satisfactory conclusion.