A Thousand Ships ~ Natalie Haynes

As a kid, I had a passing interest in Greek mythology mostly due to the Percy Jackson books. With the help of Madeline Miller and my university module, I’m interested in the topic once again and have added several retellings to my TBR. I spotted A Thousand Ships on the ‘just returned’ shelf at the library and I grabbed it.

A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes tells the stories of all the women involved in the Trojan War from those captured as slaves to the wives left behind to goddesses. Each of the stories feel as if they have come directly from the myths, despite them only being footnotes in the original stories. 

With how vast the Trojan War was, there are a lot of characters in Haynes’ story that each gets at least a chapter of their own. I’m not the biggest fan of multiple points of view, especially if they are a varying number of chapters, but Natalie Haynes managed to make it so easy to follow. 

I only have two problems with this novel and they’re both really trivial things. The first thing is that I really wanted there to be a pronunciation guide. Some of the Greek names do not sound like they read and it would have been nice to get them right. The other thing is that at the beginning there was a guide of how the characters were related to each other and a brief description of who they were. I really liked this addition, however, I found that it lacked a little detail. For example, the god Apollo was only listed as the god who gave Cassandra her prophetic visions and not anything else, nor was he linked to any of the other gods. It’s such a little thing but it annoyed me because it would give that little more context to the stories. 

Anyway, I really loved this book and cannot wait to read more retellings of Greek mythology. I gave Natalie Haynes’ A Thousand Ships four and a half stars. 

C🌙