There was a time when several novels about the Trojan War that focused on the women were published around a similar time to each other, and I was intrigued by them all. A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes was one of them, and while I found a fascinating and enjoyable read, I was somewhat underwhelmed.

I really liked the set up for A Thousand Ships. What we read is an epic poem written by a poet, who is being inspired by the Muse of Epic Poetry, Calliope. It's not the story he expects or wants to be telling; Calliope has other ideas of the stories he will tell - those of the women involed in or effected by the Trojan War. Those normally relegated to side characters, or not mentioned at all. It's quite amusing, how the unnamed poet gets frustrated, and upset, by what he's writing, but Calliope is determined about the direction this ship will be steered in. I loved this! I loved how Calliope was going to make sure the voices of these women, usually unheard, will come to the forefront of this story.

"But this the women's war, just as much as it is the men's, and the poet will look upon their pain - the pain of the women who have always been relegated to the edges of the story, victims of men, survivors of men, slaves of men - and he will tell it, or he will tell nothing at all. They have waited long enough for their turn." (p176)

I really enjoyed the premise. I loved the chapters with the gods, especially when Aphrodite, Athene, and Hera were arguing over who the Golden Apple belonged to, how vacuous they are, and how that contrasted with the tragedy of the war, the deaths, how it was down to their vanity. And also the larger explanation of why the war needed to be, and how people - gods and goddesses included - are pawns on a mighty chessboard, with much bigger things at play. This story is down to more than a man stealing another man's wife, it's so much bigger than that. It was just clever and intriguing, and thought-provoking. And I really enjoyed Haynes writing.

But I wasn't quite as keen on the structure of the novel. I was expecting A Thousand Ships to start after the fall of Troy, following the women from there. It's rather a collection of the stories of these women - from goddesses to humans, queens to priest's daughters to slaves - than a novel. It jumps back and forth through time - before the war, during the war, the first days after the war, several years after the war - following women we see for only one chapter, to others we return to several times; women who never meet, and women who are together but then separated. It was fascinating and interesting, with so many women I'd never heard of. But there didn't seem to be any proper structure. Most of the chapters could be shuffled about like a pack of cards. The chapters following the Trojan women as a group, and Cassandra and Andromache individually, and the letters Penelope writes to her husband Odysseus - which were brilliant, and so funny, even as my rage grew alongside hers- needed to be in a certain order, because they are the two threads throughout, but all the others could literally be in any order. There's no real flow. And seeing some characters for only a chapter, it's difficult to get too emotionally invested. Horrific things happen in this book, but we don't get to know or care about the characters a great deal before they happen, so it's shocking and awful, bloody terrible, but my heart didn't break. It was the same even with the characters we do see a few times, because we only get to see them a handful of times.

A Thousand Ships is important and powerful in it's way; I tabbed so many quotes, and Haynes has a lot to say about the treatment of women, and these women have very poignant, effecting things to say themselves. But I feel I would have preferred it if it was longer, with more time spent with certain characters, and for there to be more flow, a structure that made sense going from one chapter to the next. Saying that, I did still enjoy A Thousand Ships. I like Haynes ideas and what she does with them, and I'll definitely be checking out her other books following Greek myths. I just hope they'll have more of a narrative structure.

Trigger/Content Warnings: This book features vomit, blood, visceral, gorey descriptions, arson, grief, mention of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, suicide, ableism, rape, and infanticide.

Worthy of a position on the same shelf as the likes of Pat Barker and Madeline Miller, it’s so great to see the stories of the women of the myths we know so well being told with such passion and powerful prose. I loved this, and went straight on to order Pandora’s Jar.

Natalie Haynes has long been responsible for my classical education via her wonderful Radio 4 series Natalie Haynes Stands Up For The Classics, yet I hadn't realised that she was also a novelist until I saw A Thousand Ships pop up on Netgalley. Haynes has always had a real gift for retelling ancient mythology, her passion and enthusiasm is truly contagious. Yet while contemporary retellings of female characters from legends have been popular in recent years, authors generally zoom in on one particular character. With A Thousand Ships, Haynes is refusing to be so choosy. Instead, she seeks to grant a voice to every woman connected to the Trojan war. Uniting the voices of such a disparate cast is a bold endeavour, with the obvious risk of some drowning out others. Yet Haynes keeps a steady hand on the tiller, building her characters into a chorus who question what it means to be truly heroic.

Serving as narrator is Calliope, who tells the story while also being bossed around by a poet who is unnamed but can be assumed to be Homer. The novel's opening words are 'Sing, Muse, he says, and the edge in his voice makes it clear that this is not a request'. Right from the beginning, we see what the dynamic is between these women and the men who order their lives. Even as they plead with the gods for assistance, the men expect their demands to be fulfilled. I have read reviews of A Thousand Ships which roll their eyes at Haynes' stated goal of speaking for the 'forgotten' women of the Trojan war, claiming that these women are not unremembered. Yet even when women are mentioned in The Iliad or other similar sources, their interior lives are utterly ignored. Only a very few fight in the battles, they have no agency and they function more as chattel of the male characters than actual living breathing people themselves. As Haynes points out via Calliope, 'war does not ignore half the people whose lives it touches. So why do we?'

Haynes' central thesis is that the women within in the Trojan war were not as silent as the ancient writers would have had us believe. The priestess Theano looks at her husband Antenor and knows that she would gladly swap his life, would live merrily as a widow, for the return of any one of her four dead sons. Bitterly, she snaps at him that they both know that the Greeks are hiding in the horse. Antenor responds miserably that nobody will heed his warnings. So Theano orders her husband to go and open the gates for the Greeks. If the city is going to fall, she wants to make sure that her daughter at least remains safe. I have read stories about these two characters before. Antenor, the 'noble' Trojan who advised that Helen be returned to her husband. His wife, sister to Queen Hecabe and guardian of The Luck of Troy. I knew that they were spared during the sack of Troy. The idea that it was due to Theano's furious refusal to be subjected to any further indignity rather than Antenor's treachery was an intriguing spin.

Haynes' story threads back and forth, touching both sides of the conflict. The Trojan women sit and wait for the Greeks to decide what is to be done with them, knowing that things are about to get much worse. Hecabe curses all those who she believes to have escaped. Andromache gives silent thanks that not everyone is in the same accursed situation. Polyxena asks her mother when she first knew that the city would fall. The shadow of rape hangs over them all. They think about when the Amazon fell, and so the reader hears the story of Penthesilea. Hecuba sobs out her guilt that she did not kill Paris in his cradle as the oracle advised. The tragic fate of Polydorus is uncovered. The Greeks come to coax Andromache into handing over her baby. These are dark, bleak, painful stories. Yet when the poet cries to Calliope that these tales hurt too much, the Muse responds crossly, 'It should hurt. She isn't a footnote, she's a person. And she - all the Trojan women - should be memorialised as much as any other person'.

The sting of A Thousand Ships comes from Haynes' strong emotional connection with her characters. The lurching moment as Iphigenia realises she is not walking towards her wedding. The panic as Creusa cannot get out of the city. The blood-freezing chill as Andromache realises that they really are going to kill her little son. That last one makes me cry every time. I started re-reading as while writing my review, swept along by Haynes' undoubtedly engaging prose, but it was all much harder to bear knowing what was in store. It is not that Haynes is ever gratuitous. If anything, she shies away from sexual violence, particularly in contrast to Pat Barker's The Silence of the Girls. Where Barker has Chryseis repeatedly brutalised by Agamemnon who is described grimly as 'preferring the back door', Haynes has Briseis slip the younger girl some herbs that will render the high king incapable. A Thousand Ships packs its punch in emphasising the dogged misery and grief of these women's lives. Fewer stinking latrine pits. More monologues and introspection.

I found Haynes' portrayal of Cassandra to be particularly thought-provoking. Over the years she has been slapped and scolded into keeping her voice to a whisper, her constant prophesies given no more heed than the buzzing of a fly. Even when she predicts the fate of Polydorus, the other characters quickly forget that she has done so. Her curse to be forever disbelieved is portrayed here as a claustrophobic nightmare from which she can never escape. Along with the accompanying nausea, vomiting and screaming, she it hardly makes her an appealing companion. Cassandra is another narrator within the novel however, with her visions of the future giving insight into the other characters' ultimate fates.

The tradition has long had it that the men were the heroes. The proof is in the poetry, the tales of they rode into battle. Yet Haynes points out that there is another side. There were two wronged spouses in the Trojan war. Menelaus, the cuckolded husband but also Oenone, the spurned wife. Narrator Calliope remarks that Menalaus 'loses his wife so he stirs up an army to bring her back to him, costing countless lives and creating countless widows, orphans and slaves. Oenone loses her husband and she raises her son. Which is the more heroic act?' Oenone looks at her beautiful child and wonders how his father can care so little for him. She is not the first mother to have had that thought. In the violent and uncertain world that these women live in, the act of motherhood is one of true heroism.

A Thousand Ships has its lighter moments. Snaking through the novel are the letters from Penelope to her errant husband, heavy with sarcasm and irritation. Did he really need to shout out his true name to the Cyclops? And precisely why is he living as husband to Circe? Hearing regular updates from the bards on her husband's journey home, Penelope has to contain her irritation at yet more delays. To add insult to injury, when visiting the Underworld, she hears that Odysseus asked his dead mother about his father, his son, his honour, his throne and various others and only then, remembered to ask about his wife. Odysseus is having a fine time as the guest of goddesses while his wife brings up their child and tries to keep their household together. Again - which of them is the hero?

There is courage in simply surviving. In continuing to exist despite impossible pain. The men's sufferings end as they breathe their last on the battlefield. When Andromache begs to die with her child, she is told that she belongs to Neoptolemus. Her life is not hers to discard. She is not to be permitted the escape of death. Instead she must serve the man who murdered her beautiful baby. To share his bed. To bear his child. My skin crawls at the very idea. That Andromache lived through it reveals a greater steel in her soul than many of the warriors on the plains of Troy. I was ten when I first read of what befell her. This was years before I learned that her captor had slaughtered her child. I could only ever picture her as a statue. I could not see how a living human could endure such a shift in life. To go from being the beloved wife of Hector, the proud mother of an adored child - to a slave and a concubine? And yet Haynes imagines how Andromache simply adapts. She never comes to love her captor but 'nor could she maintain the visceral loathing she had felt when he first took her from her home. It was not possible to keep hating a man with whom she lived in such close proximity.' His cruelty does not dissipate but 'circumstances forced her to find something in his character that she could tolerate'. Oh Andromache - more than any of the others, my heart aches for you.

A Thousand Ships is not a happy read. In fact, it left me emotionally drained. While the precise facts of the Trojan war are open to dispute, what is certain is that women have suffered in similar ways since the dawning of the world. Where men make war, women are treated like cattle. As in her radio series, Haynes' passionate sympathy for her subjects shines and while her perspective may seem subversive, her writing is firmly rooted in the original sources. These women were always there in the texts but they truly might as well have been statues for all the notice that the poets took. The pain of women is not the story that the world (men) want. Intelligent and insightful, A Thousand Ships sings of the valour and courage of women which is too often taken for granted. Serving as either introduction or intriguing extra, Haynes' novel is a must-read for fans of classical mythology.

‘…this was never the story of one woman, or two. It was the story of all of them. A war does not ignore half the people whose lives it touches. So why do we?’

I love a good myth retelling & Natalie Haynes’ recent novel A Thousand Ships is no exception.

In Haynes’ epic, she tells the story of the Trojan war, focusing not only on what happened, why it happened and what happened after, but on the lives and consequences of war on the women. Each chapter is told from a different woman’s perspective and while we follow some of the big names already made popular through movies, plays, poems and novels, we also hear from lesser known, ignored characters who are treated with equal care and attention. For those of you who have read Haynes’ previous novel, The Children of Jocasta, this will come as no surprise. I found new heartbreak in each voice and the gritty trauma of war really shines through. It is not one sided, we follow mortals, royals and citizens alike, Greeks, Trojians and goddesses. Their differing circumstances and experiences are what makes this novel feel so comprehensive. Sometimes conflict and the so-called heroes of war are romanticised in literature, largely because we need someone to root for to feel a connection, but I am pleased Haynes did not go down this route. How can you portray the devastation and loss of one’s whole world adequately otherwise? Even the tricksy gods and goddesses who orchestrate the lives of the mere mortals are not portrayed as enviable or even likeable beings. The women are the ones we connect to, root for and empathise with.

‘Because the Spartan king had lost his queen, a hundred queens lost their kings.’

Despite the relatively short length of the chapters, the reader really comes to feel for the woman on the page and remembers their story and tragedy long after the last page has been turned. Haynes expertly weaves the threads of the story together and despite the mix of point of view characters and the nonlinear narrative, the pacing and flow of the story is never compromised. We do see a few returning characters, Calliope for instance, reoccurs to remind us that war is not rosy, we cannot pick and choose which aspects to focus on and every life is significant and worth sharing. The Trojan women, the displaced mothers, daughters, sisters of the heroes of Troy collected on the beach, slaves to the victors, return to remind us of how royalty can fall and the harsh realities of surviving the battle on the losing side.

My only quibble was with Penelope’s chapters. While I enjoyed the epistolary format, her voice served to describe the adventures of her husband, the famous Odysseus as he spent 10 years away at war and then a further 10 years getting home. For the other women, we focus on them and their story, but Penelope writes letters to her husband telling him what the bards are saying and how she hopes it isn’t true. It was a shame and I felt the least connected to her as a result, although I did chuckle at her snarky remarks.

I have seen some complain that this retelling offers nothing ‘new’ to the canon, and yes, if you are a classicist or are well read in classical literature this might not be for you. I, however, throughly enjoyed seeing these women come to life and my heart broke for so many of them (goddesses and Helen excluded, naturally). I have read a few retellings and many of the characters and events were familiar to me but I loved it nonetheless. I can see why it was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and I hope it gets lots of new readers because of it.

Please note that this book is not for me - I have read the book, However I had to DNF and because i do not like to give negative reviews I will not review this book fully - there is no specific reason for not liking this book. I found it a struggle to read and did not enjoy trying to force myself to read this book.

Apologies for any inconvenience caused and thank you for the opportunity to read this book

"Just as I promised him: this was never the story of one woman, or two. It was the story of all of them. A war does not ignore half the people whose lives it touches. So why do we?"

This is the book I had expected Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls to be. A retelling of the events surrounding the Trojan War written from the perspective of not just one or two but many of the women who had a role to play in the war and its aftermath – and going beyond the Iliad, the Aeneid and the Oresteia to tell the stories the men didn’t tell.

From Penthesilea, the Amazon queen, to Cassandra the prophet; from Thetis, the sea nymph and mother of Achilles, to Gaia, the personification of Mother Earth; from Iphigenia, cruelly sacrificed on what should have been her wedding day, to Creusa, who wakes in the night to find the city of Troy in flames – just think of a woman from Greek mythology and she is probably here, in this book!

The stories of some of the women are told quite briefly, while others are given more time and attention; some appear only once but others recur again and again throughout the novel. Interspersed between these stories are a series of letters from Penelope to her absent husband, Odysseus, the tone growing increasingly hurt and frustrated as tales of his heroic escapades begin to reach her while the man himself appears to be in no hurry to return home to his wife. And holding all the other threads of the novel together are short sections of commentary by Calliope, the muse of epic poetry, who is providing guidance to a blind poet who wants to tell the story of Troy:

"Men’s deaths are epic, women’s deaths are tragic: is that it? He has misunderstood the very nature of conflict. Epic is countless tragedies, woven together. Heroes don’t become heroes without carnage, and carnage has both causes and consequences. And those don’t begin and end on a battlefield. "

This is an ambitious novel but, for me, it mostly works. I say mostly because there were times when I found the structure confusing – the stories are not presented in chronological order and jump around in time so that a chapter set after the fall of Troy is followed by a chapter set at the beginning of the war – but I’m happy to admit that I am in no way an expert on Greek mythology and readers with more knowledge probably wouldn’t have a problem. I’m not really sure of the reason for the non-linear structure, though – obviously the stories must have been carefully arranged in a certain order but to me they felt very random. Also, because there are so many different narrators, many of whom made their voices heard only for a few pages before disappearing from the novel completely, it was difficult to form any kind of emotional connection with them. Still, there are some I found more memorable than others: Cassandra, doomed to constantly ‘watch the shock on people’s faces, when precisely what she had predicted – and they had ignored – came true’; Hera, Athene and Aphrodite fighting over the golden apple inscribed with the words ‘For the most beautiful’; and the sad story of Laodamia, devoted to a bronze statue of her lost husband.

Although A Thousand Ships felt more like a collection of short stories than a novel, I enjoyed reading it and am now wondering whether I should try Natalie Haynes’ previous Greek retelling, The Children of Jocasta.

3.5 stars.

A Thousand Ships is an epic undertaking, tackling not only The Trojan War but it’s long and drawn out aftermath, all told from the women’s perspective. Always there, ever present, this is their story. From slave to queen to goddess, this is how they all became involved in the mighty Trojan War and what befell them when the great city burned.

I would say that before going into this you need at least a small amount of background knowledge regarding the Trojan War. There is a non linear timeline here that covers backstories and the reasonings behind the war, as well as flash forwards and prophecies from multiple points of view. Without some knowledge of the original texts this pulls from, the story could get very confusing with lots of characters to remember, as well as the various timelines. I do think that at times it tried to cover too much, making the story a little too thinned out over too many people, meaning I couldn’t deeply connect with many of them. Odysseus’ journey could have been a whole separate book on its own (although I did love Penelope’s humour and sass, especially when she begins to repeatedly question her husband’s loyalty to his wife while he lords it up with various beautiful immortal women).

I also really enjoyed the tone of Calliope’s (muse of epic poetry) small chapters. They helped to break up the more heavy storylines involving the Trojan women, with Calliope herself acting almost as a narrator or show woman of the stage, breathing life into her poet’s tale. She also had a biting wit, and a dislike of Helen that had me laughing a few times. My favourite chapter however, is the one involving the golden apple and Athena, Aphrodite, Hera and Paris. A story that starts the Trojan War, I loved seeing the goddess’s act so childishly, reacting with jealousy and vengeful wrath when they don’t get their own way. However, we later learn that they’ve all been manipulated from the outset, with the machinations of the war brought to fruition by Zeus himself. Immortals trickled at their own games, they’re all delightfully horrid characters who use mortals as playthings to pass the time.

Aside from the slightly unnecessary large cast, I ended up really enjoying this. It’s what I was expecting from The Silence of the Girls, where the women truly take centre stage for once in their own story. The Trojan women, with all their heartbreak and suffering, grief and misery. Cassandra with her cursed visions and madness, seeing not only her own death but that of her brothers and sisters too. Over and over. It’s no wonder she went mad. Even Clytemnestra and poor innocent Iphigenia. I loved hearing their opinions, sharing their emotions. Even Helen’s. Although perhaps ironically, for the face that launched a thousand ships, she has very little story time here. I just wish the structure had been a bit more linear, and Penelope had her own book to flesh out her story.

One of the best female retellings of some of my favourite Greek stories to date.

Very original rewriting of the Trojan War from the point of view of all the women involved. I love Greek Myths and this one is particularly beautiful: just a few hours can change History.

Brilliant retelling of the Trojan war from the perspective of the women. Like Euripides' The Trojan Women, the author gives a voice to those who were the catalysts of this historic event.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishers for letting me read an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

When I think of Ancient Greece, I can almost hear the voices echo through the years. Admittedly, they are mostly male: crying out in anger, victory, contempt. They all swirl together so fast that they almost become light; almost connecting me to a world where magic still exists.
The women’s words have been lost to the wind: the society they lived in did not bother to write them down, to raise them up, to keep their spirits alive. Nearly two thousand years later, even the work of Sappho only exists in fragments.
Natalie Haynes’ Trojan War-centric novel is called Thousand Ships, but it so easily could have been called Thousand Voices. Sure, the Greeks launched many-a-fleet to come to fair Helen’s rescue, but that choice also propelled so many of those involved onto life-paths they had never before imagined. Because war, mythological or otherwise, touches everyone. It permeates, it ricochets, it grabs on with its teeth and it doesn’t let go.
No one, no matter how near or far they are from the battlefield, escapes unscathed.
And through this woven mismatched patchwork, Haynes once more brought their stories - and more importantly, their voices - back to this world.

I love greek mythology, particularly when it focuses on the women of greek mythology, and I have since bought a copy of this book in audiobook and paperback!

This is an absolutely beautiful book. I love the way Natalie Haynes writes! The Trojan War told from an all-female perspective was incredibly moving.

"A Thousand Ships" is a spectacular retelling of a well known myth of the Trojan war - a well known story that was retold by others, countless times, most recently and most notably by Pat Barker. But Natalie Haynes produces her own version of the myth - the one that encompasses events leading to the fall of Troy as well as the aftermath of the war. And throughout the book she gives voice to those usually omitted, not considered enough heroic, important and meaningful. The ancient history is full of women -women warriors, wives, mothers; women who are cruel, obsessed, indifferent, loving; women who interfere, meddle, avenge and suffer. "A Thousand Ship" is a book not about men, but the women who the story usually leaves behind, considers unimportant or inconsequential, despite that the conflict was started because of women.

I admit it took me a while to get into it. I realise now that this book is told as a story - a multivoiced and patchworked narration that begs to be told aloud like the past stories recited by poets, Audiobook is a perfect medium for this title.. Through it the voices shine, harmonise and ring true. The way it is read (by the author herself) is perfect - with the craft of a true storyteller, Natalie Haynes guides the reader/listener through the book. Her voice weaves the story into a complicated and intricate tapestry, its characters alive and meaningful.

I think this sits nicely between Silence of the Girls and Circe in retellings of ancient Greek myths. The focus on a wide variety of female figures is done well and the tone and style to explore their conflicts is well balanced and well-paced. There is a lot of ground covered and there were a couple of areas that could have been pushed further but this was an enjoyable read.

One of the best books I've read all year - and unlike Pat Barker's The Girls this was really about the women involved in the Battle of Troy and its aftermath.

Each woman has a unique voice and a new viewpoint on the story, and Penelope's letters to the wandering Odysseus are some of the funniest pieces of writing I've read for a long time.

Haynes manages to tell the stories clearly, and in a way that echoes the classic dramatist but also her own voice shines through, Utterly wonderful

The war for Troy has waged for ten years but now it is ending. The women of Troy await their fate on the shoreline whilst the gods who have brought this to pass observe and interfere. From the beginning this has been a game to the Gods but the voices of the women have been hidden yet they have much to say.
For some reason the classical pens and plays based on the Trojan War have become source materials for a series of novels over the past few years - it seems glib to say they are 'en vogue' but the quality of the novels is exceptional. Here a series of small vignettes about the different female characters lend an alternative perspective to some of the best known tales and weaving them together gives a more female focus to a series of narratives where women have been represented as minor characters - wives, slaves or whores. Haynes' writing is simple yet beautiful, each women has a personality that is unique yet the whole weaves together immaculately. The timeline is not linear so that the antecedents of the war are explored backwards, Penelope's story takes place over a longer timescale than the others around it and the fate of the Trojan women is extended. Overall this is a magical and special book both for the cleverness of the plaiting together so much source material but also for the beauty and simplicity of it all.

With the influx of fiction based on Greek Mythology in recent years, you may be wondering - do we really need another retelling of The Iliad?
The answer is - absolutely.

Natalie Haynes breathes fresh air into this tired tale by giving us a much needed female perspective. However, where other authors have focused on one character to tell the story, Haynes gives us a plethora of perspectives, and actually tells far more than just one story, covering The Odyssey from Penelope's perspective, as well as numerous other sources to provide more meat to the bones of these women's tales. The women Haynes writes about range from Greeks such as Penelope, and Clytemnestra, Trojan women Hecabe, Polyxena, Andromache and even Goddesses Athene, Hera and Aphrodite.

Haynes uses muse of epic poetry Calliope to change the game, insisting on showing Homer the stories he wishes to shy away from. She works as a fantastic frame to bring all of these divergent tales together, seamlessly tying in relatively unknown stories such as how Eris, the goddess of strife, fits into this rich and wonderful tapestry, or the fates of the Trojan women, something often forgotten or neglected, or indeed, in one fantastic scene, the Fates themselves.

In telling these stories, Haynes refuses to shy away from difficult topics, and she doesn't seek to make them more palatable. We see women abused and treated in abhorrent ways, there is sexual assault, brutal murder and constantly total disregard for the humanity of women. However, A Thousand Ships is not a hopeless or despairing view of women's lives or experiences. Haynes shows strong women, women who fight, women who survive through unimaginable trauma, and women who seek to do everything they can for their families and the people they love.

While many will make the case for original stories rather than retelling existing ones, what Haynes achieves with this book illustrates just how important is to shed light on characters in mythology, legend and history who have been neglected and underrepresented. Haynes has written a truly outstanding book which highlights the importance of telling a multitude of stories and is concerned with the very nature of storytelling itself.

Huge thank you to Pan Macmillan, who sent me a review copy of this novel.
I am really enjoying all the retellings of classic Greek and Roman myths that are popping up at the moment, and especially all the feminist, and female focussed versions. Madeline Miller and Pat Barker have written amazing retellings, and this one deserves to be mentioned in the same breath.
Haynes has rewritten the Battle of Troy, when the Greeks besieged the city of Troy for ten years, and sent the infamous Trojan horse into the city in an apparent peace offering. However, this novel barely mentions any of these events, certainly they are not discussed in any detail, there is very little focus on the battles or the years of fighting, instead we read about the Trojan women captured after the city fell, the wives left waiting for their husbands to return to Greece, and even the female Gods themselves.
I adored every single moment of this novel. The narrative is epic and the prose so elegant, it is a superb page-turner. Having the chapters come from different character’s points of view allows there to be an excellent linear flow to the narrative, and Haynes seamlessly weaves the women’s stories together into a rich tapestry of female empowerment.
I don’t consider myself to have much knowledge of the myths, I know the big events and names, but it’s never been an area that I’ve read in much detail. This novel was particularly informative, and I actually learned a lot from this novel, relating to the women and their experiences, but also about the mythology that surrounds the events in general. But even if you have no knowledge about the myths, this novel will still be accessible and enjoyable. There is also a handy character list at the beginning of the novel, which I made regular use of to keep on top of who was married to who etc.
Overall I really loved this novel! If you like mythology and classical retellings, this novel will be a great addition to your reading lists. An epic novel with absorbing characters and emotive prose, it’s well worth checking out!

Excellent retelling of the Greek myths, focusing on the women in the stories and the impact that the men’s actions have on their lives (and deaths). This is becoming a bit of a literary trope these days, but a range of styles helps make this fresh. Thoroughly recommended.

Powerfully told from an all-female perspective, A Thousand Ships gives voices to the women, girls and goddesses who, for so long, have been silent.

This is such a beautifully written book, showing the strengths of the women from beginning to the end, they are written as human even though they are gods and given so much voice in this book and I love it for it. The story of Calliope, as she opens and closes this book is done to perfection in this novel and it makes for such poetic and floating writing, I loved that aspect of the book.

This book does take it’s time to build, you have to invest, however, when this book truly gets going, this is a book you will not stop wanting to read, and keep going until the end. I’m a big fan of the classics, and this book with it’s links to women’s empowerment just really does tick all my boxes, and after finishing ‘Epic Continent’ recently, I feel like reading these characters and their scenery to life for me, in new and of course epic ways.

A gorgeous book, written perfectly, even the cover is brilliant - I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves tales as old as time and awesome women.