Review Published in APA's Amphora

After a bit of a hiatus, the APA's (American Philological Association) Amphora, intended for outreach to a broader audience than the APA's membership, has published its latest issue and, to my surprise, a rather lengthy review of the Follow Your Fates series was on the front page. Click here for Amphora's page on the APA website (the issue with the review is 10.1; scroll down to download it).

The review was largely positive (and certainly not negative). The reviewer's primary concern with the series was the lack of true open-endedness to the fluid narrative because of the pre-existing narrative, i.e. the appeal of the series is diminished by the pre-knowledge of how the story ends. While this is certainly the case with adult or older readers, especially those with a background in Classics, this likely is not the case with younger readers, for whom the series is intended. These readers might have a cursory knowledge of the Trojan War and its heroes from surveys written for them but likely don't have any knowledge of the epics on which such stories are based and the specifics of the plots of these epics. She focused on the creative aspect of the books while, in writing them, I was focused on the educational aspect of the books.

Nonetheless, I was thrilled to see the review and have it out there, so thank you Amphora and Diane Arnson Svarlien. And the review was mentioned on the ECU Classics blog, which you can get to here (thanks, John).

(In the interest of full disclosure, I should add that I am on the editorial board of Amphora, but had nothing to do with editing the review or its inclusion in this issue.)