Hades

I read both Argo and Jason, thoroughly enjoying both and feeling that the story telling was getting better with each instalment. I must say I was always wondering what happened to the protagonists and was waiting for some closure. For me then Hades doesn't disappoint since it offers a version of events that concludes the tale of the Golden Fleece, and it does it in a way that I don't think has been done before.Perhaps the beauty and appeal of Greek Myths is that they are just that - myths. That means within reason they have always been open to interpretation, with different versions of each one in existence. Readers can literally choose which ones they prefer.This book offers Mark Knowles' interpretation - led by his detailed knowledge of the Myths and own research, travels and imagination - of how Jason's grandson seeks to galvanise support from a network if islanders who are plagued by seaboard raiders. Some of that support comes from an unlikely source - a group of the original Argonauts, who get together after an annual reunion. Their numbers are dwindling, their ages increasing, but their willingness to engage in battle for a good cause is undiminished.The story follows a young man who feels he has a mission and a destiny to fulfil, perhaps because of his lineage, but also because of a sense of waging war against a bullying, rampaging menace.After some scene setting involving different locations and times the story settles into an absorbing and gripping race against time. The writing is in my view cinematic and I've felt that with some of his other work. Reading it, I felt I was able to vividly picture every scene as if it was a movie, and I'd love to see one made of it. I can't recall one on this subject, but I could be wrong.The story doesn't have a particularly happy ending, but it is a poignant and appropriate one since it provides, for me at least, the closure I have been waiting for.The research that has clearly gone into writing this book must have been colossal, tying together known facts with various versions of Myths and weaving personality traits into the text to animate the main characters who the reader can clearly identify with.A good book for me has to contain an inventive story with a clever tale and an ending that leaves me thinking. An excellent book has to contain an inventive story that is either original or sufficiently twists an already-known tale to make it feel so, and then leaves me with a feeling of 'how did he/she do that' and genuinely desiring more of the same.This is an excellent book.