I love mythology. The stories, despite their inherent weirdness due to the distance they have between our understanding of the world and theirs, are yet so familiar. I believe this is due to us taking over so many of their concepts and ideas into modern media. Heroes' journeys, fair maidens, dragons and demons, gods and traitors, none of it feels fresh, which is why reading mythology can be difficult sometimes. Reading modern stories makes you feel like ancient stories are incomplete, or unfinished. What I mean is that modern stories, with their plotting, character development, and other modern tropes, feel so much better organized. It is a bit like preferring the copy of something, or the work of the student who has outdone the master. Stephen Fry manages to cast the original in a new mold, making it all the more exciting. With grace, he merges a modern sense of humor with ancient prose.

Four stars.