If there is a back story to The Odyssey, then this novel by J. C. Graeme is it.

Forget the return from Troy and a band of heroes voyaging the seas and encountering monsters and adventure aplenty while having their way with the local maidens and the odd goddess. In this story of Odysseus, he is a bar-fly in the Sunset Bar on Khios, where he trades stories for jugs of wine with the bar owner Homer.

He takes on a job for a local merchant on Khios to pick up some cargo on the mainland, and while crossing the sea in his little boat, he is blown off course along the coast of Asia Minor. On this adventure, he encounters a whole cast of characters, and maybe even a goddess or two, though they have little in common with the characters peopling The Odyssey as we know it.

J. C. Graeme vividly brings to life the goings on in the late Archaic period of Greek history and relates a more human epic where even the pantheon of Gods who have ruled over things for so long are being questioned, or at least defied, by mortals. Odysseus meets them all, the Anthropophagus, Circe, Calypso, and the Sirens, but not as we know them from classical literature.

In the end, Odysseus finds he is accidentally on a voyage that will lead to blindness, madness, and even a vision of what the underworld is like. And he will find, despite the despair from all he encounters on his voyage and his descent into madness, that there was more wonder and excitement in the outside world than he ever found in a cup of Koan red in Homer’s Sunset Bar.