Reviews with content warning for Blood - A Thousand Ships

Wow, this was an amazing book! I found myself getting emotional during the closing chapter. I wouldn't say the audio added or detracted from the experience (and I'm really impressed that the author did such a great job with it), although I do think it would be harder to listen to this one without some knowledge of Greek legends and myths. It really helped me to have familiarity with all the names that were being thrown at me since I couldn't see them written down or page back to review. The amount of research that went into this book is truly mind-boggling and I'm in awe of how much information Haynes was able to condense into this narrative.

Having looked at some other reviews, I understand why readers would want more depth and time spent with each character. Maybe I was unbothered due to my familiarity with the source material; Haynes was giving us a lot more information about these women than Homer ever did! I also loved the humor that was sprinkled into all the darkness and bloodshed, particularly Penelope and Calliope's chapters (it must be so irritating to have men begging you to inspire them all of the time). So much love for this feminist take on the Trojan War and for my beloved, exasperated Calliope.

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heather_freshparchment's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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elizabeth_lepore's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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getlitwithamy_'s review against another edition

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dark emotional informative reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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ashleycmms's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

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lorees_reading_nook's review against another edition

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emotional sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

Initially I was not really enjoying this book. I thought that the writing was rather mundane and the characters somewhat flat. But gradually, it felt as if Haynes found her voice and I started to feel an emotional connection with some of the women telling their story. My favourites were Cassandra and Andromache and I was sorry when their chapters finished as I really wanted to get to know them better.

I thought that Haynes' decision to recount the stories of all the women (be they mortals, nymphs or goddesses) affected by the Trojan war may have been over-ambitious. With nearly every chapter dedicated to a different character there were many women who seemed to flit across the pages like shadows without leaving a lasting impression. Perhaps purposefully, Helen does not get to tell her story and we only see her through the eyes of the other women. I would have liked to have heard her perspective too.

The men were not totally absent from this story but the stereptypical depiction of the Greeks as shallow ruthless killers down to the last man is probably justified from the perspective of an enslaved Trojan woman. However I hated the portrayal of Achilles as a killing-machine. I think there was more depth to the man than that.

A Thousand Ships is not as compelling a read as some other retellings of the Greek myths and it does give a voice to the women that we generally do not hear much about but I was expecting to be more moved by it than I was.

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jeannekmele's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

cws: rape, child death, slavery, war, grief/trauma, genocide mention, spoilers

An exceptional collection of nearly universal tragedy across its heroines, pyrrhic victories are the norm for women whose darkest moments shine with vibrant human spirit on the pages of A THOUSAND SHIPS.

So often left footnotes--wives, mothers, sisters, sluts and daughters written to live, die, and love for the storied men of old--any background knowledge of the classical canon will lend an unerring hand to the conclusions we know these women will come to. Yet you cannot help but root for their success, or their peace if no such thing exist; despite the ends long since written for them, their human resilience and fragility and the womanly grit behind it all almost feels as if history could rewrite itself this time.
It doesn't, of course, but this in of itself is the devoted intersection of care and craft.

Though ATS is tragedy from the first page to last, the deluge of misery and loss roils and settles with the comfortable shape of a story until you're left with a sense of resolution that is not gratifying, but it is real. And that is the way of tragedy, trauma, and war: these things cannot be reversed, nor smoothed over, nor sated.

Andromache's family, first husband and son are dead; but she has another husband, another son, and her freedom; perhaps that must be enough. Penelope loses twenty years of her life, marriage, queenship and motherhood waiting for a husband who never comes home to her. But there is a like man in their bed, and his name is Odysseus, and perhaps that will have to be enough.

What of Eris, the instigator? What of Helen, the adulteress, the end of a kingdom? It is very easy, in a song about war, to glorify and vilify to the whims of one's own biases, or heroes, or chosen themes. I don't believe you will find such binary in this book.

A mother kills children to avenge her own. Slave-owners and rapists (we'll save the discussion on rape, duious consent, and power in the classical canon for another time) show gentleness and provision to their victims, even when regarded as property. The selfish goddesses who set a decade of devastation and a death toll unnumbered are, themselves, steered from the shadows by intentions as selfless and pragmatic as they are genocidal.

I will quote Natalie Haynes' afterword: 'Survivors, victims, perpetrators: these roles are not always separate. People can be wounded and wounding at the same time, or at different times in the same life.'

It would be erroneous to go into A THOUSAND SHIPS expecting anything less than complex women with rich inner lives under extraneous circumstances. In the man-made disaster that is war, it becomes impractical and impossible to keep an orderly measure of right and wrong. The human condition warps into something immeasurable under such extreme duress. Though by no means a soothing read, I nonetheless devoured ATS as I haven't done with a book in a long time.

I will close with this: Grief is a long-lived creature with many faces that may come in any amount or combination at any time, in three days or five years, or decades hence. Grief is angry, and loud, and dead-eyed; it is wasting away and endless tears and twists in our chests that by right of anatomy shouldn't twist there; it is jealousy and accusation and cruelty and violence and submission and insanity.
Grief is ugly, and so often in contemporary western culture it is unsightly and to be repressed. In women, grief is mockingly anticipated, oppressively levied, and mercilessly culled. A THOUSAND SHIPS is an excellent read across the board, but for those who are processing grief and trauma, who may be unsure how to (especially women), it is a cathartic and humanizing portrait of the externally-inflicted and yet worst, most unacceptable parts of ourselves that are too big for our bodies, and too loud for the world.

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