A Thousand Ships

Book Title: A Thousand Ships

Author: Natalie Haynes

Date Started: April 16th 2020

Date Completed: April 25th 2020

Genres: Historical, Mythology

Quality Rating: Four Stars

Enjoyment Rating: Three Stars

Final Rating: Four Stars

Review:

◆ Thanks to NetGalley for this eBook copy for review ◆

With a somewhat weighted heart, I have to admit that I didn't find anything particularly special about A Thousand Ships. It's plainly written, ticks all the boxes for a Greek myth retelling, but doesn't really put a twist on anything. Yes, it's giving voice to the women who are often glossed over in the canon, but there are other novels and short story collections that, in my opinion, do the same thing in a more interesting and creative way. That doesn't mean this book is without its strengths, however.

A Thousand Ships is like reading a book of Greek myths - direct, simple, self-contained but still connecting to the greater arc of the universe that was Ancient Greece and its surrounding kingdoms - which is probably the point. My problem was going into this expecting a novel, which made it feel fragmented at the start. When I noticed that it was trying to echo the old story collections, things started to take shape. But, honestly, I feel like this was a chance to flesh out the women's lives alongside their part in the poems, but all it really did was narrate the traditional tales in their voice. Which is fine, and obviously still necessary (and the fact that the women were painted in varying colours was very refreshing), but I was honestly expecting more.

I do wonder what it would be like to read this without knowing the original Greek myths in detail; I think you might be a bit lost. There's a lot of information and names and connections, and many different myths in this novel. It's not really a just retelling of the Trojan War, but more of a big chunk of Greek history since it also retells The Odyssey, (a bit of The Aeneid) and adapts multiple other miscellaneous tales through connections in family relations, time jumps and even parallels to the current events. That, I did like. Greek mythology is hard to appreciate without understanding the bigger picture because literally everything ties into something else - it's like Marvel on steroids, and actually motivated. But for a beginner, that's quite a deep pool to be thrown into at first.

That being said, I am going to, ironically, completely contradict what I just said and suggest that A Thousand Ships might also be a good introduction to 'feminist' Greek mythology. While there's a lot of references that aren't necessarily coherent unless you know the history, I think it's possible to accept you don't recognise the names or connections and keep reading. And what it does do is touch on just about anything you could possibly be interested in within Greek mythology, and from the viewpoints of the women. I actually think the fact that I already knew the stories and have read a fair heap of feminist retellings/essays on the myths mean that nothing felt especially new for me. But had I read this when I was studying classics in college, I probably would have been in love.