Most young adults will probably find Colum's version of The Golden Fleece and the Heroes Who Lived Before Achilles uneven in quality; some passages are vividly and dramatically presented, while others seem lifeless. By their nature, epic stories demand a departure from the everyday idiom, and even Homer used a "literary" or elevated version of the Greek language to relate his epics. Colum too uses formal and dignified language, but some of his sentences depart so far from ordinary English speech that they are difficult to read. Colum's style may be explained, in part, by the fact that The Golden Fleece was written almost seventy years ago—a time when formality pervaded almost every aspect of life. Colum may also have felt hampered by the discrepancy between the age of his intended audience and the adult subject matter with which he was dealing. For example...