Reviews with content warning for Blood - A Thousand Ships

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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marisa_n's review against another edition

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adventurous dark reflective sad tense 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? It's complicated

3.5

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onceuponabookcase's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

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

3.0

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 involved 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.

Content Warnings

unwise_samwise's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? N/A
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Content Warnings

abbieinwonderland's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad slow-paced

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

2.5

I originally rated this as a three star book, but I woke up the next day after reading it and chose violence.

In my opinion, this book does not do what it claims which is the biggest flaw. It promises to tell the stories of the unsung women of the Trojan War. What we get is just a few pages for some of the characters, which I can only assume is an extension of the one line they were given in the original poems. It felt like the author was telling a very simple rendition of these characters. I never felt like they had real depth. The only moments we saw of some of their lives were the moments before their deaths.

I also felt this book was quite repetitive. Especially the first chapter which felt like an effort to add some drama and tension at the beginning as a hook. There were some phrases throughout which kept getting repeated, particularly about Hector's body being dragged around the battlefield by Achilles. This was brought up over and over.

I enjoyed the idea of the Calliope chapters. This was a nice touch. However, it did get heavy handed with the feminist themes.

Speaking of feminism. The author clearly hates Helen of Troy. Calliope literally says she's trash and won't tell the poet anything about her. Um, this is a book claiming to tell the stories of ALL the women in the tales. Helen is the most important. Her choices or lack thereof led to the whole war. Why should she be left out? Even if Helen is not a "pure", brave and heroic character, why not explore her story anyway? It would have been interesting to see a complex interpretation of her. There are many different types of women. We can't all be crammed into the same box or label. When telling the story of multiple women, shouldn't there be a level of variation? There was an opportunity here to explore a woman who makes a bad decision and the consequences. But no, the author has decided she must be shunned instead and have her voice taken away... feminism? Really?

And don't get me started on Penelope. She is such an interesting, clever and resourceful character, a match for Odysseus, but she was reduced to retelling the story of Odysseus instead. I did enjoy how her letters grew more sassy as the war went on. Her voice was the most distinct to me out of all the other women. But she spent most of her chapters retelling Odysseus's story and not her own.

I enjoyed certain characters more than others, for example Cassandra.

I'm not saying I hated this book, I was in it for the ride at the time of reading but on reflection I feel like I've been scammed.

Maybe it's because I've read Circe and I've been spoiled by having a whole book about an unsung woman. But I don't think it is. I think some of the decisions made while writing or editing are the cause of it.

Content Warnings

barb_christensen's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional funny sad medium-paced

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

4.0

I just wish there was a happy ending, but alas that was not as it was.

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rd77's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character

4.5

A very interesting read. The author was able to make you sympathize for each woman very quickly, and it was interesting to think about the impact of the war on women, since it’s not talked about nearly enough. The only thing I didn’t like was Penelope’s chapters- for anyone who has read The Odyssey, it’s a tired retelling of it, with little actual insight to Penelope’s side of the story until her last 2 chapters.

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