Can anyone recommend fiction set in the Greek mythos?

[Ser Lewis]

... a good novel that is set in story mode (not a textbook or encyclopedia) that is based on Greek Mythology? I would like to start reading about it because it has always interested me. I would like to be able to start at the time of the Titans and going forward from there.

I don't really want anything like Percy Jackson or a modern day reboot but rather a book with the original characters/figures from Greek Mythology. Once I finish my 4th re-read of ASoIaF I'd like to get into this.

[Ser Lewis]

Thank you for the suggestion but I am after something that is basically the complete history of Greek Mythology in story form (for adults). That is probably a better explanation than my OP ;)

[Clueless Northman]

Hesiod's Theogony?

Iliad and Odyssey?

Barring that, there must be some mythological compendium that narrates in quite chronological order the whole thing - I had one when I was a youngster, but can't remember what it was.

Obviously, don't expect to have the whole thing in one novel, because if you try to do some novelization, you'll end up with a dozen of books.

[Ouroboros]

Gene Wolf's Latro in the Mist.

[Mikkelinski]

Illiad and the Odyssey are the first to spring to mind.

I don't know any storybook that weaves together all the myths and legends, but you'll easily be able to find tellings of the common ones like: Labours of Heracles, Bellerophon and the chimera, Persus (gorgon / medusa), Oedipus (not the Freud complex or whatever), Jason and the Argonauts, Ikarus and the sun, Marysas and Apollo etc etc.

Like Clueless touched on, not one novel but several smaller stories that are disconnected.

[aceluby]

Dan Simmons' Ilium/Olympos is a greek gods meets sci-fi duology. I haven't read it, but it's ont my backlog.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilium/Olympos

[Crowjack]

Gene Wolf's Latro in the Mist.

The unreliable narrator at its best.

[Werthead]

I don't know any storybook that weaves together all the myths and legends,

Ovid's Metamorphoses does this. It's basically the Condensed Greatest Hits of Greek Mythology, written from a Roman perspective. There are numerous translations, some as plain text and some that try to retain the original poetic structure.

The problem is that the scope of such a thing is too huge to fit into a traditional novel. Novelists have done elements of it - David Gemmell's Troy Trilogy is superb, for example - but making a coherent story out of the thousands of years of history (real or invented) is a tall order.

[Darth Richard II]

Gene Wolf's Latro in the Mist.

This times a thousand.

Dan Simmons' Ilium/Olympos is a greek gods meets sci-fi duology. I haven't read it, but it's ont my backlog.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilium/Olympos

This minus a thousand.

[Mathis]

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

Incest, murder, bacchanalia and a good old fashioned deus ex machina. Can't get any more Greek than that.

[Borque]

Dan Simmons' Ilium/Olympos is a greek gods meets sci-fi duology. I haven't read it, but it's ont my backlog.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilium/Olympos

Beware of this one. It seems to start out good with Ilium, but Olympos is not only bad in itself, it manages to turn the entire duology into grade A crap.

[Wilbur]

I can't help you with the entire span of Greek mythology - that would be Ovid or nothing, and Ovid translated into English is often a textbook.

However, some authors have certainly turned Greek mythology into either middlebrow fiction or else fantasy novels with great success.

Mary Renault is the archetypal writer of middlebrow fiction. Her study of Theseus in two books is a joy to read.

• The King Must Die (1958) — the mythical Theseus up to his father's death
  
• The Bull from the Sea (1962) — the remainder of Theseus' life
  

Gene Wolfe, as Ouroburos notes above, wrote two excellent Greek books (and one later stinker about the same guy).

• Soldier of the Mist (1986)
  
• Soldier of Arete (1989)
  

If you have access to a good used book store, the Puffin Classics editions of Roger Lancelyn Green's books are an excellent and fairly straight-forward retelling. He was an Inkling with Tolkien and Lewis, and his prose goes down smooth as butter.

• Two Satyr Plays: Euripides' Cyclops and Sophocles' Ichneutai (1957)
  

• Tales of the Greek Heroes: Retold From the Ancient Authors (1958)
  
• The Tale of Troy: Retold from the Ancient Authors (1958)
  
• Mystery at Mycenae: An Adventure Story of Ancient Greece (1959)
  

• The Luck of Troy (1961)
  

• Tales the Muses Told: Ancient Greek Myths (1965)
  

• Tales of Ancient Egypt (1967)
  
• Ancient Greece (John Day Co. 1969)
  

• The Tale of Thebes (Cambridge University Press 1977)
  

And finally, I can't let any classical stories discussion go by without recommending the Hellenic Traders books by Harry Turtledove, writing as H.N. Turteltaub. Historical fiction about two cousins, traveling merchants in the 4th-century BC Mediterranean.

• Over the Wine Dark Sea (2001)
  
• The Gryphon's Skull (2002)
  
• The Sacred Land (2003)
  
• Owls to Athens (2004)
  

[Darth Richard II]

If anyone tried to get yo to read Hade's Daughter by Sara Douglas, run away and call the police.

[AverageGuy]

The Greek Myths by Robert Graves maybe?

[sologdin]

graves adds some curious fictions of his own to the representation, NB!

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

If you're just looking for the myths themselves, Bullfinch's Mythology is a good place to start.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulfinch's_Mythology

[Ser Lewis]

Wow. Loads of excellent suggestions. Thanks people! I will look into some of these :)

[sologdin]

bulfinch has its idiosyncracies, like graves.

the best way is to read the ancient texts. accept guidance from the meridian handbook of classical mythology.

[Seli]

Graves is great for an overview and variations, although it is sadly best to take his theorizing with a shaker of salt.

For people a bit more familiar with the mythos "The lost books of the Odyssey" by Zachary Mason is highly recommended.

Gemmell's Troy trilogy is a great re-framing of Iliad and Odyssey, trying to tell a story as it (mostly) could have happened.

[Summah]

Besides the Iliad and the Odyssey, I recommend the big 4 ancient Greek playwrights: Euripides (so, so much, and lots about women from Greek mythology, but the Trojan Women is probably my favorite), Sophocles (notably the Oedipus cycle) Aeschylus (the Oresteia is the probably the most famous) and Aristophanes (I haven't seen most of these but I think Lysistrata is funny). I know reading plays can be a bit dry, but you can probably find recordings of performances of all the most famous ones.