Review: A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes

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A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes

Published: 2nd September 2020 | Publisher: Picador | Source: Bought
Natalie Haynes’ Website

This is the women’s war, just as much as it is the men’s. They have waited long enough for their turn...

This was never the story of one woman, or two. It was the story of them all...

In the middle of the night, a woman wakes to find her beloved city engulfed in flames. Ten seemingly endless years of conflict between the Greeks and the Trojans are over. Troy has fallen.

From the Trojan women whose fates now lie in the hands of the Greeks, to the Amazon princess who fought Achilles on their behalf, to Penelope awaiting the return of Odysseus, to the three goddesses whose feud started it all, these are the stories of the women whose lives, loves, and rivalries were forever altered by this long and tragic war.

A woman’s epic, powerfully imbued with new life, A Thousand Ships puts the women, girls and goddesses at the centre of the Western world’s great tale ever told. From The StoryGraph.

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The StoryGraph | Goodreads

Trigger/Content Warnings: This book features vomit, blood, visceral, gorey descriptions, arson, grief, mention of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, suicide, ableism, rape, and infanticide.

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Once Upon a Retelling: A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes

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Welcome to Once Upon a Retelling! I'm a huge fan of retellings, and I'm really interested in hearing about authors' own love of the original stories, and what inspired them to retell those stories. And so Once Upon a Retelling was born, a feature in which I interview authors about their versions of well-loved tales.

I am so excited to have Natalie Haynes stopping by the blog today to discuss her retelling of the Trojan War, A Thousand Ships.

Can you tell us a little about A Thousand Ships? What kind of a retelling of the Trojan War is it?

Well, it’s retelling the war from the perspectives of the women involved in the war – it goes forwards and backwards in time from the Fall of Troy (thanks to the Trojan Horse…), and follows the consequences of the war in one timeline and the causation of the war in the other timeline. We see the goddesses, women, demigoddesses, wives, daughters, etc. of the men whose stories we’re used to reading. Often these stories did exist in the ancient world but have been lost, so I decided to reimagine them for the 21st century.

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