Greeks have won. Troy has fallen, But, although epic tales have been written about the siege of Troy, it was never only about the heroic warriors or the cunning leaders. This is as much the story of the people around them: the wives, mothers, sisters. The Trojan war is also the story of the women behind the walls, the women that got enslaved and those who managed to flee.

This is the story of the Trojan war as lived by the women.

Natalie Haynes reconstructs the story of the most legendary war ever told: the Trojan war. Through the eyes of not one ore two, but several women, the reader sees what happened a little before and during the siege of Troy, but also the tragic consequences of the Greeks' victory. What did the people in the background of the epic stories think and feel? What did they go through?

Piece by piece, the author gives us the story from many different points of view. From peasant women to the Trojan Queen herself, we get to see and experience it all from so many different sides, that we can't help but absorb all the scenes and get in the heroines' skin ourselves.

A Thousand Ships is a different kind of narrating an epic tale, just as (or even more) interesting than the ones readers are used to. Exceptionally well-researched, it is a story that you'll enjoy reading over and over. Definitely a recommended read.

Have been let down with a few re-tellings of late, so was a bit cautious picking this one up. Lucky for me, Haynes lived up to the expectations promised in the premise and delivered a great story.

The story starts off a wee bit slow and some of the jumping around confused me, until I realised it was not all linear, but it definitely picks up. A few of the chapters and POVs were hit and miss, but there were also some real gems in there. After a few chapters, I couldn't put it down. A great contribution to the growing collection of Classical Greek modern interpretations and retellings.

Recommended for fans of Madeline Miller, The Penelopiad, Homeric epics, Virgil and Ancient Greek tragedies.

My thanks to Pan Macmillan/Mantle for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘A Thousand Ships’ by Natalie Haynes in exchange for an honest review.

This was such a pleasure to read. Novels based on the myths and legends of Ancient Greece are currently in vogue and I couldn’t be happier.

I have long been a quiet devotee of the Muse Calliope and so was delighted that hers was the opening voice who wryly asks: “How much epic poetry does the world really need? Every conflict joined, every war fought, every city besieged, every town sacked, every village destroyed. Every impossible journey, every shipwreck, every homecoming”.

Later she reveals that this work will be something different as: “I’m offering him the story of all the women in the war. Well, most of them (I haven’t decided about Helen yet. She gets on my nerves).” (Oh Calliope, Muse of my heart, I sing your praises and those of Natalie who heeded your call.)

The narrative moves between various stories through time: before, during and after the war. Penelope writes a series of letters to her wandering husband while he takes the ‘scenic route’ home. They are witty and more than a little snarky.

The fates of the Trojan women are recounted as are others caught up in the conflict such as Iphigenia and Clytemnestra and various Goddesses. It’s certainly very dark in places yet there are strands of hope and even humour.

This novel easily passes my ‘gods’ test. That is Haynes doesn’t seek to rationalise their existence; they just are. Going about their business and getting caught up with the lives of humans. I was especially moved by Gaia’s chapter.

Haynes’ Afterword lists her inspirations and various texts.

Her writing flows so effortlessly. Throughout ‘A Thousand Ships’ I felt completely transported as if I were standing beside Calliope as she spun her tales into the ear of the poet. I savoured each page and plan to read her other works.

I will certainly be recommending this brilliant novel widely.

A Thousand Ships is my first Natalie Haynes novel, so I wasn't exactly sure what to expect. Wow, this is a truly majestic and captivating work of historical fiction depicting the plethora of trials and tribulation associated with the Trojan War and is told from an all-female perspective. It's a joy and adds to the feminism and female empowerment around at the moment in the times of the #metoo movement and demonstrated female awakening. The sense of time and place Ms Haynes evokes is vivid and extensively researched giving it a wonderfully distinct air of authenticity which runs the duration of the novel.

Given that women and their achievements were either downplayed or not recognised at all in that period means that this is a long overdue and intelligent re-imagining of the war. For too long the part women played in many notable worldwide events has been sadly forgotten; this book attempts to change that in a highly entertaining and utterly immersive fashion. The time and place are so beautifully rendered that you can almost see, hear and smell said places. The characters are all too believable and as much flawed as you and I; both the plot and cast deepen with each turn of the page.

An epic, superb page-turner that is informative and thought-provoking. Unreservedly recommended to those who enjoy Greek myth, historically accurate fiction and/or feminism. Many thanks to Mantle for an ARC.

3.75 stars

"A Thousand Ships" is a retelling of the story of Troy from the female perspective. I liked most of the perspectives the various stories were told from, even though some chapters were a little slow. Penelope's chapters were, in my opinion, the weakest chapters overall.

I especially enjoyed the chapters told from the perspective of women I'd never heard from before because they introduced some of the lesser known stories from the Trojan war.

“Too many men, telling stories of men to each other.” says the muse Calliope in Natalie Haynes’s new book. As true of The Iliad as it is of quite a big chunk of all literature since. It gets really boring. So I was really happy to hear Natalie Haynes looked back at the Trojan War and wrote a book about all the women who are, with the exception of Helen and Andromache, largely absent from its classical narrative. I was also a bit apprehensive because recent retellings or modern interpretations of classical myths have not always been successful in my opinion. I needn’t have been.

From the first sentence, ‘Sing muse, he says.’ (to Calliope), I really enjoyed A Thousand Ships. Each chapter takes on the story of a different woman or a goddess in some way involved with the Trojan War. From the women of Troy, huddled together by the shore while they await their fate after the fall of the city to Penelope, writing letters to Odysseus, waiting for his return with lessening patience and growing irritation.

It is not a linear narrative, it starts at the fall of Troy but then weaves in the stories about the origins of the war, including the excellent chapter on Judgment of Paris with vain, squabbling Hera, Athene and Aphrodite and the lament of Gaia, mother Earth in pain because “Mankind was just so impossibly heavy.” The most powerful stories though are of the women whose husbands, sons and fathers fought in the war. Women of the house of Priam for example, Hecube, her daughters Polyxena and Cassandra, gifted with prophecy but cursed that nobody would believe her words and Andromache, Hector’s wife.

What I particularly liked was how true Haynes was to the source materials (listed in the Acknowledgments) but at the same time, created a narrative completely her own. Reading about ‘the daintiness of her (Hera’s) wrists and ankles’ made me smile as I always wandered why Homer picked ‘dainty ankles’ as an epithet for Hera. It’s godlike Achilles and wily Odysseus but Hera is of dainty ankles. I love classical mythology and while I’m familiar with the main stories of the Trojan war and aftermath, I still felt Haynes had something fresh to say. There were also quite a few characters I didn’t know about like Oenone, Paris’s first wife whom he abandons for Helen. As Calliope says “A woman who lost so much so young deserves something, even if it’s just to have her story told. Doesn’t she?”

My thanks to Pan Macmillan and Netgalley for the opportunity to read A Thousand Ships.

This is a retelling of the aftermath of the Trojan War from an all women perspective. I enjoyed this, although I didn't quite love it as much as I wanted. The writing is a little overly descriptive at times and the switches in perspective was a bit jarring a few times. Apart from that, I enjoyed the plot and I thought the writing was good. I would definitely recommend checking this one out.

I really liked this retelling of Greek myths and of Troy. All from the women who lived it and the roles they played. It told of what the women endured and how strong they were. And it was a really fascinating and enjoyable read!

Thanks to Pan Macmillan and NetGalley for the Advance Review Copy in exchange for an honest review.

Every so often a book appears on NetGalley that makes me slam the Request button with extreme prejudice whilst muttering fervent prayers to the publishing gods. This was one of those books and I was so excited and chuffed when I was approved for it.


I am a big..nay, HUGE fan of Natalie Haynes. The Amber Fury actually inspired me to return to teaching despite thinking I never would. When I have my horrible third years on a Friday afternoon I think of that class from that book. I’ve been looking forward to this book since I heard it was in the pipeline.

So, enough gushing. How was it? WELL IT WAS AMAZING, I’d go as far to say it is Haynes’ best book yet.

The book puts the women involved in the Trojan War front and centre. Some women who are mere footnotes or referred to in passing in The Iliad and The Odyssey are fleshed out and jump from the page to tell us their tales of war, family, love and loss. This is impressive considering some of the women’s stories are just a few pages long. Despite this, they all feel credible and unique and I really got a feel for each of the individual characters.

You know when you watch The Lion King and you hope that this time, things will be different? Mufasa will make it up the cliff and all will be well? That’s pretty much how I felt reading this book. Andromache’s story was particularly gut wrenching, as it always is, but Haynes has managed to add another layer of humanity and tragedy to her fate. Get the tissues ready folks.

The Trojan Women chapters were interspersed between the other women’s narratives and the growing sense of tension and unease as they await their bleak fate was very affecting and had echoes of Cacoyannis’ 1971 film adaptation of the Euripides play.

This book takes an unflinching look at women’s experience of war and is surprisingly contemporary with parallels to be drawn between women’s lot in both historical and modern warfare. I couldn’t help thinking how similar the treatment of the Trojan Women was to that experienced by Yazidi women for example.

The stories are woven throughout the book using a variety of formats and writing techniques. I particularly enjoyed Penelope’s letters to Odysseus and how Calliope almost broke the fourth wall.

It was also interesting how the roles of men and women in these great epics were essentially reversed. ‘Great’ heroes were reduced to mere cameos and we saw that many are not so great after all. Focus was kept always on the women.

Overall, I loved this and have already pre-ordered the final version of the book. Not an easy read by any means but I absolutely adored it and it managed to exceed my already high expectations.

P.S. Agamemnon is the WORST.

I like the retelling of ancient Greek myths and this book was a really good one.
I loved how the author was able to retell the story using the POV of the female characters, making us see the what happened after the war of Troy through the eyes of female characters.
The book is well researched, the author knows what she's writing about and know how to turn the classic into a contemporary story.
The characters are well written, fleshed out and I like how their voice seems to reach us through the centuries.
It's not a fast paced book and I think it would be great to read it one chapter at a time.
I look forward to reading other books by this author.
Recommended!
Many thanks to Pan Macmillan and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

I’m always happy to read a book that takes a woman’s perspective on an event or tale that has historically only focused on the men (I think we can all agree that men, mainly the straight white ones, have had enough of a voice historically speaking). So, of course, I was looking forward to this book. And I did like it. The three-star rating attests to that. But I just didn’t like it as much as I wanted to.

A Thousand Ships is a retelling of the aftermath of the Trojan War, from the points of view of the women who hardly ever get a look-in when the story is told. There’s no particular starting point to the story – it flicks back and forth depending on who’s narrating – so, in a way, it has less a narrative structure and is more an examination of the thoughts and feelings of the various actors. And there are quite a few of them.

I think the biggest issue I had with the book was that the POVs weren’t all that distinguishable. It’s one of those ones where if you miss reading the chapter title, you might take a moment to realise whose POV it is. The most distinguishable, and therefore, my favourites, were Calliope and Penelope. Partly because they were in first person, so actually had engaging voices. The rest of the POVs were third person (though omniscient) narratives, and it felt pretty same-y after a while. Penelope and Calliope got to have something more like personality. I especially enjoyed the parts of Penelope’s chapters where she was busy getting (snarkily) pissed off at Odysseus. (Even though there was some woman-hating going on. I guess that would be partly understandable (Odysseus does bugger off for 20 years, and spend a good chunk of the latter ten hanging out with women who aren’t his wife), but given that the whole book is about the untold women’s stories of the war, and recognising that actually men are to blame for this whole mess, even as we tend to attribute it all to Helen? It just felt… I don’t know, cheap?)

Probably the reason I didn’t find the POVs that distinct was in the writing. It was good writing, but it was very descriptive at points, and a lot of what was happening was going on in the minds of the women, so it felt pretty ponderous. And it felt like that for all of them. There were some great quotes that made me go ‘oh‘, but there were then lulls between those moments. All of which ultimately meant the writing wasn’t quite for me.

So, in the end, this was a book with a great concept, that just turned out not quite fulfilled as well as I was hoping.

This takes time to build up, but so worth it, it tells the tale through different female perspectives of The Trojan War rather than just one like some other books, you get to see many sides and points of view. A well written book, with many important messages about strength, feminism, war , there are so many important messages you can take from this. It’s a powerful read and will stay with you long after you close the book.

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a free copy for an honest opinion

Tristia

Natalie Haynes, noted Classicist, joins the ranks of authors devoting their skills to the myth of the Trojan War: Pat Barker, Madeline Millar, Emily Hauser have all focused a female eye on Homeric epic, while Zachary Mason and David Malouf represent masculine points of view.

Hayne’s novel is presented as portraying the women of the Iliad and the Odyssey and their fates post-Wooden Horse of Troy. The novel is very interestingly structured: it is not dissimilar to Zachary Mason’s The Lost Books of the Odyssey in that many of the chapters are self-contained vignettes which do not lead anywhere beyond their own story – a good example of this is the very first chapter, an account of the attempted escape of Creusa, wife of Aeneas, from Troy as the city falls to the victorious Greek conquerors. Creusa is not mentioned in Homer and is known most famously through the account of Virgil in the Aeneid. This chapter ends with an abrupt anti-climactic shock and sets the tone for much of the novel, ironic, witty and knowing.

Threaded through the brief accounts of women associated with the war are longer recurrent narratives: the Trojan women as captives awaiting the Greek decision on their future; a series of letters from Penelope to her husband Odysseus where patience and faithfulness change to irritability and a sense of betrayal and finally to a sense of resigned acceptance. The Penelope letters are among the more successful scenes in the novel and would comprise an interesting and amusing novella in their own right.

The tales of some of the other characters hold the interest: the tormented Cassandra, the intelligent but powerless queen Hekabe. There are scenes of melancholy sadness, others of plangent grief. The author, I think, owes a debt to the structure provided by Ovid in the Metamorphoses as well as that poet’s awareness of female psychology. There are many nods also to the works of Aeschylus and Euripides, but especially, of course, to Homer, tormented as he is by a most irritating Muse, determined for once that women’s voices are at the centre of things.

A Thousand Ships is the Trojan War retold from the perspectives of a plethora of women, Trojan, Greek, and gods. It starts with Troy burning, and stretches out in a non-linear fashion to tell the story of the war, how it came to be, and what happened afterwards. Famous stories—Penelope and Odysseus, the Trojan women, Helen, Aphrodite and the golden apple—are told from different perspectives, and other characters given a fuller narrative (as Haynes outlines in the afterword). By the end, the story of the war has been told, but not as it usually is.

Female retellings of material from the Iliad and Odyssey have been prevalent recently, perhaps most notably Madeleine Miller's Circe and Pat Barker's The Silence of the Girls. Where A Thousand Ships differs is in its style and scope: this is a book that gives a huge range of female perspectives, and uses carefully chosen moving perspectives to weave the story together. For example, Cassandra is used to tell others' stories, but her own death is from Clytemnestra's view, and Penelope tells Odyssey's story in the form of futile letters to her husband. Calliope, muse of epic poetry, is used to provide a sharp take on male-focused epic and the tendency to ignore the fights of the women. This multi-faceted approach is what has felt lacking from other retellings, and it also makes the book a surprisingly good way of get an overview not only of the content of the Iliad, but a host of other classical texts and stories that rely on the Trojan War in some way.

Another crucial aspect is its depiction of war itself, and the horrors of it. This is a book full of death, as the story requires, and there is sometimes a surprising amount of nuance, such as where Trojan characters accept that if the tables were turned, the Greeks would have been slaughtered and forced into slavery just the same. Calliope's sections bring some overall commentary on war and also about writing one, even if it is mythical.

As A Thousand Ships unfolds, it becomes a compulsive read, waiting to see which characters get their story told and how the Trojan War will be woven together through these perspectives. Naturally, there's plenty that has to be left out, glossed over, or changed, but this isn't an academic exercise, but rather a complex novel that should sit along other modern retellings of these classical stories as a reminder there's new ways to bring out these narratives.