The Song of Achilles

I started this book with low expectations. I don't usually read books like this. Historical anything is not very high on my list of reads.

There are books you enjoy.

There are books that stick with you.

And then there are books that quietly rearrange something inside your chest and leave you sitting there wondering how something so soft could hurt so deeply.

The Song of Achilles is that kind of book.

I listened to the audiobook and read along with it, which made the entire experience feel immersive in a way that almost felt unfair to my heart. There was no escaping it. No skimming. No emotional distance. Just Patroclus’s voice guiding me through a story I already knew the ending to, and somehow still hoped it would change.

From the very beginning, you can feel it.

Before love is named.

Before it is understood.

Before it is allowed.

Patroclus and Achilles are soulmates long before either of them has the language to explain it. Their love is never rushed or loud or performative. It exists in quiet glances, in shared spaces, in choosing each other again and again in small ways. Even when it is never fully “said,” it is intensely portrayed. It is devotion. It is belonging. It is inevitability.

That first kiss at thirteen years old broke open something tender in me. Not because it was dramatic, but because it was gentle. Innocent. Honest. And the way Achilles immediately leaves afterward made it ache in that quiet, unresolved way that mirrors real love when you’re young and don’t know how to hold it yet.

Chiron surprised me. When he said, “No, Achilles, I do not mind,” it felt like permission. He was kind in a way that felt rare in a story filled with ambition and prophecy. I loved him instantly. He was softness in a world sharpening itself for war.

And Peleus… I think he loved his son. I really do. Not perfectly. Not gently. But in the way men often do when they don’t know how to love without pride or expectation. That made everything harder to witness.

This book carries a constant tension because we already know how it ends. Achilles’ fate is not a mystery. It is a shadow hanging over every beautiful moment. And being inside Patroclus’s point of view makes that unbearable in the best and worst way. We are loving while knowing we are losing. We are watching devotion form while knowing it will be punished.

Patroclus himself is everything. He is kindness in a violent world. He is compassion where men choose power. He is the one who saves Briseis. The one who sees people, not trophies. The one who acts out of love instead of legacy. His heart is the moral center of the entire story.

And Achilles… Achilles is complicated. He loves Patroclus deeply. Completely. But he is also shaped by prophecy, by glory, by the way men are taught that their worth comes from being remembered. Their love exists inside that tension. It is not perfect. It is devastatingly human.

The greed of the men in this story is suffocating. Their hunger for power, reputation, and dominance contrasts so sharply with Patroclus’s softness that it feels intentional. As if Miller is asking us to notice how love is always the quietest force in a loud world.

The moment Achilles sends Patroclus into battle shattered me. There is no version of that choice that doesn’t feel unbearable. Love and fear and desperation tangled together into one decision that could never end well.

And then the line that truly ruined me:

“When I am dead, I charge you to mingle our ashes and bury us together.”

That is not romance. That is devotion. That is eternity.

This book is not just a love story. It is a meditation on what it means to choose love in a world that values glory. It is about how loving someone fully is an act of rebellion when everything around you tells you to chase legacy instead.

Patroclus and Achilles were never meant to survive. They were meant to be remembered together.

And maybe that is the quiet tragedy and beauty of it all: Their love did not save them, but it made their lives sacred.

This book did not entertain me. It altered me.

And I will never be normal about it.

With love, Tiffany

Drowning in my heartbreak for Achilles and Patroclus.