A review by guybrarian133
A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes

4.0

Thanks mostly to cultural osmosis through a plethora of various media, I’ve long been familiar with the tale of the Trojan War. Or, to be both more specific and far more honest, I’ve long been familiar with the traditional tellings of the legendary conflict dominated by outsized male characters like Achilles, Agamemnon, Odysseus, Hector, and the like. And frankly, even with my personal longstanding general interest in mythology, this epic of battles raging on the plains below the walls of Troy, clashes of ego between rival Greek leaders, and deception via wooden horse has long since evoked any kind of interest from me at all. It’s been such a longstanding western classic and so culturally ubiquitous to the point where it had become stale.

Now that I’ve read Natalie Haynes A Thousand Ships though, I am definitely singing a bit of a different tune. Her spotlight upon all the women of the Trojan War, from mortals to muses to nymphs and all the way up to the goddesses of Mount Olympus, gives an overdue voice to half the population of the epic after spending centuries at the margins. And by doing so, to be bluntly enthusiastic on my part, the author has created the most genuinely engrossing and fantastically refreshing take on this legendary war that I have ever had the privilege to read to date, period.

For the many out there who enjoyed Madeline Miller’s “Circe,” this is another focus-shifted contemporary retelling from Greek mythology that is definitely not to be missed out on.