Bradley's tone and approach to the matter of Troy is that of the historical novelist rather than the fantasy writer.

Character and setting are realistic and demythologized, their scientific and anthropological basis emphasized. Centaurs and Amazons are prehistoric tribes living a difficult life on the high plains, and the wars between the Greeks and Trojans are the result of trade and economic rivalry, their outcomes more dependent on access to iron weapons than on heroism.

As Bradley explains in her afterward, the more linguistically correct spellings— k's rather than c's—are chosen over the more familiar Latinized versions.

The characters themselves are life-sized and humanized, vulnerable, Kassandra's own temperament a mixture of the visionary and the practical and skeptical, a combination which brings her afoul of the gods themselves, when she suspects an apparition of Apollo to be only a randy priest in a gilt mask...