The Greek Myths are still going strong in children's books, with centaurs, cyclops (cyclopses?) gorgons, and the gods of Olympus all popping up fairly regularly. Often these days they tend to be placed in modern settings (by Rick Riordan in his Percy Jackson series, for instance,) or used for humour (by Maz Evans in Who Let the Gods Out? or by yours truly and Sarah McIntyre in Kevin's Great Escape). But Philip Womack's latest novel The Arrow of Apollo plays its mythic goings on absolutely straight and sets them in the time and place they belong.
Actually we're not just in Ancient Greece but also Ancient Italy, for the story opens a generation after the Fall of Troy. It's the tail end of the Age of Heroes; the borderland between myth and history. The gods are departing, and in Lavinium, a city founded by the Trojan Aeneas in Italy, a wounded centaur arrives with news that the evil Python is stirring, plotting to take over once the Olympians have gone. Aeneas's son Silvius and his orphaned Carthaginian friend Elissa are drawn into a desperate quest to reunite the two parts of the Arrow of Apollo, the only weapon that can defeat Python.
Meanwhile, in Mykenai, Tisamenos son of Orestes finds himself being drawn into the bloody cycle of revenge which has cursed his family and which made the Oresteia such a cheery, laugh-a-minute fun-fest. The book skips between these two storylines for its first half, until the plucky young protagonists meet, bury any lingering Trojan/Achaean differences, and unite to defeat Python and break the curse on the House of Orestes.
The story takes most of its ingredients from the myths but is, as far as I can tell, All New, which means that it works as a fast-moving fantasy adventure even if you've never heard of Orestes or Aeneas - everything you need to know is painlessly explained along the way. The action is pretty much non-stop, and features a memorable encounter with the last of the gorgons, a sea-nymph who can turn herself into a ship, and no shortage of battles, betrayals, and hair's-breadth escapes. There's a nicely eerie touch where Tisamenos, who has been turned ever so slightly to stone by his encounter with the gorgon, finds himself able to see and hear the echoes of the past held in the walls of his father's palace. The subject matter and the setting are clearly close to Philip Womack's heart - he has already produced a terrific reworking of the Theseus legend in The Double Axe, and his earlier novels such as the Darkening Path trilogy were all woven from the stuff of myth, legend, and folklore. The Arrow of Apollo is a fine addition to his body of work. It ought to appeal to children who already know the Greek myths, and hopefully act as a gateway to them for those who don't.
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