I hope you've enjoyed the first week of my epic-in-verse, Some Amazons. In case you missed it, this is a retelling of the Epic Cycle rhapsody that once followed directly after the end of Homer's Iliad, reconstructed from ancient sources and modern archaeology.

I appreciate your indulgence. This is not a story that anyone asked for. As much as people love the Iliad and Odyssey, no one is clamoring for a retold Aethiopis in verse format. But this is the story that asked to be told, and to be rendered in a format conducive to multiple perspectives.

Episode 1, "You Never Call Anymore," is a modern take on the invocation to the Muse of Epic Poetry that would have started the original story.

Episode 2, "Ride, Amazons!" introduces Queen Penthesileia and her Amazon companions, riding for Troy.

Episode 3, "The Life That's Been Erased," checks in with Achilles and some of his Achaean comrades.

And we're off!

The Trojan War depicts a conflict in which both sides are fighting for a sympathetic cause, driven to the battlefield by supernatural forces beyond human understanding. Having put this story aside for a few years, I'd forgotten how much fun I'd had with these characters.

The Epic Cycles features polarizing figures for readers to love, hate, and argue about--Achilles in the Iliad and Odysseus in the Odyssey. The story Some Amazons is based on exists between these two stories in a lost baton-pass area. Achilles is still prominent but his story is building toward his demise while Odysseus is ready to take over.

People who dislike Achilles in the Iliad are picking up on the fact that his character arc is incomplete. Achilles, at the start of the Iliad, is a flawed hero. His insubordination and disloyalty lead to the death of his soulmate, Patroclus, which then unleashes his severe anger management issues. But Achilles shows growth and develops into a better version of himself by the end of the Iliad. He becomes capable of putting aside his pride in reconciling with Agamemnon, and putting aside his anger in his encounter with Priam.

The Iliad contains the first part of the "Achilles Grows Up" trilogy that once continued with the stories of Achilles vs. Penthesileia and Achilles vs. Memnon in the Aethiopis. When we lost those parts of the story, we lost the best of Achilles. When we broke the Epic Cycle, we lost the greater context in which Achilles was originally presented and understood.

By the end of the Iliad, Achilles has achieved better emotional control and is further along the path of acquiring wisdom, but he still has the potential to become a better person. He has lost Patroclus, his primary source of emotional support, and now needs to incorporate the best parts of Patroclus into himself in order to become a more complete person. This is a need that Achilles is just starting to realize in Episode 3 of Some Amazons even as he prays for Patroclus to support him even from the grave.

Speaking of characters with room for improvement, we're about to meet Thersites in next week's episodes. Thersites is crude, cowardly, outspoken, and universally hated by his allies among the Achaeans. Will Thersites live to become a better person?

Only time will tell.