I would give 4.5 stars if I could, but I'd rather round up than down with this one.Zachary Mason's conceit for The Lost Books of the Odyssey is brilliant, immediately reminding the reader of the high fantasists Borges and Italo Calvino. The novel, or collection of 44 chapters or book-scroll transcriptions, is also clearly a work of devoted love, a love of literature and a love of the potential for every great tale to contain endless revisions and retellings. The strongest of these `lost books' here would certainly cheer Borges and Calvino. That said, this is a first novel, and it is not uniformly excellent though no single story is bad. All are by nature fragmentary, although some seem cut too short, usually those that have become a bit too clever for their own good. In other words, there is a feeling that the strongest of these stories were written at a later date than the weaker ones. The stories are certainly not in any chronological order of composition, but a perceptive reader might discern the best-written stories here as the most recent.Over all, in the volume's brief 228 pages it is the first third that is the most consistently excellent. In the first fourteen chapters covering 70 pages that consistent quality carries the reader without let up, taking us into more and more wonder and curiosity. The first and sixth very brief chapters are particularly haunting and touching, each an elegy to lost years of adventure and life moving on its sad way elsewhere. The chapters between are wickedly clever and very fun, all very much in the Borgesian tradition, with the awareness of fictionality entering into the dramatic universe and transforming it. These stories are immensely gratifying, intellectually and dramatically.Among the next eight stories, "One Kindness" is also hauntingly atmospheric, sly and even a little touching. "Fugitive" impeccably brings together `meta-fiction' and dramatic action with great satisfaction. Odysseus is aware of his storied life and is compelled to make an escape. "A Night in the Woods" is darkly erotic, even an exquisite celebration of savagery that would satisfy horror fans. "Decrement" (think: opposite of increment) in its extreme brevity approaches the lyrical sublime. "Fragment," even briefer is also wickedly clever and endlessly provocative--a kind of short note evoking what could be the hidden conceit of the whole volume. "Epiphany" is one of the most brilliant revisions of The Odyssey here--but its conceit is simple, straight-forward, almost touching in the humbling of a hero: Yes, the reader might think, Homer might have redacted just this aspect of the epic, hiding a very delicate nerve. At `book' fifteen the momentum of excellence begins to slow a little, islands of high brilliance now coming staggered at intervals of lesser excitement, sometimes verging on bathos, sometimes merely verging on bafflement of the reader. "The Myrmidon Golem" is clever, but a little too cute in its cleverness. This is where Mason occasionally disappoints: he begins with a clever conceit he can't quite pull off, or that just seems a little too inconsequential or almost silly, as in this tale of Achilles the Homunculus. However, at page 109, book 20 "Death & the King" is an epic return to excellence. Only two or three other stories in the collection are equal to it. It may simply be the best one. It has adventure, horror, dark romance and, of course, Odysseus' clever insight and intrigue. From there the collection continues to stagger in quality. "Helen's Image," "Islands on the Way" and "The Book of Winter" are all very good, although the first may be almost too clever for. "Blindness" is clever also, a tale about Polyphemus the Cyclops blinded by Odysseus; but it is also among the most touching. Ironically, Polyphemus, this particular Polyphemus, may be the most movingly pathetic character in the volume. Two more sad tales follow this one; they are touching but not as powerful as "Blindness." "Victory Lament" is amusing and a little frightening, but again felt like an exercise in cleverness. "The Long Way Back" signals a return to the longer-form excellence of "Death & the King," although it is not nearly as dark and delightful. It is dark though, actually a tale about Theseus and Ariadne that is not the mere retelling of the old legend of the Minotaur and the labyrinth it at first seems. It is highly inventive and darkly comic. Among the last several tales, "Sanitorium" is intriguing, distantly reminding this reader of a Philip K Dick-style tale of damaged or confused psyches. However, it remains too much a fragment among fragments and never really takes off. "Record of a Game" serves as a brilliant coda to Mason's collection--although it is third from last in the book. It is also a fact-based speculative retelling of the history of chess, from India to Europe. It seems pure speculation that the isle of Chios was famous for its chess players--but it was famed for its poet-bards... The story also shows us exactly why readers tend to find The Odyssey more intriguing and poignant than The Iliad. The latter is more violent of course; but the former is more ambiguous and troubling, while still full of uncertain adventure (uncertain for the young reader reading--or listening to--the epic for the first time). The Odyssey's intelligent and curious readers also feel an affinity for the wily but stoically sad Odysseus, sometimes seeming like a helpless piece of debris or flotsam beset by storm and chaos. Finally, "Last Islands" is a wistful epilogue or epitaph even for an anciently vanished world, the images of its revered relics now mere simulacra adrift in our gray age of mechanical reproduction and bric-a-brac kitsch. And yet there are some readers who turn to their imaginations, turning to rely on an inner light, and are able to make those relics move and breathe--and come alive once again.After page 71, I would actually recommend reading the best stories first: "Death & the King," "The Book of Winter," "Blindness," "The Long Way Back," "Record of a Game" and "Last Islands." Then return to chapter 15, and read the last two-thirds in a couple of sittings. I would keep returning, now and then, to the best stories here.