Here are 100 books that Black Ships Before Troy fans have personally recommended if you like
Black Ships Before Troy.
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I’ve always been fascinated by stories of myth, magic, and ancient cultures. I grew up devouring everything I could get my hands on, but it seemed like voices were missing in so many myths and legends. Persephone isn’t even the main character in her own myth. Aphrodite, Helen, and countless other women were painted with the same depthless brush. I wanted to know their stories, and as I grew older, I realized I wanted to tell them. The authors of the books in this list are kindred spirits. Countless hours of research and reading went into these stories, and their love for the subject shines through the text.
Ever since reading this book, I *can’t* think of the original version of the Iliad without referencing his haunting retelling from Patroclus’ perspective. Miller did such an incredible job putting me in the story and making the characters so real that I actively missed them when I put the book down.
It doesn’t hurt that it has some of the most beautiful poetic language I’ve encountered in story form. Helen is more of a background character playing her classic role, but I was still fascinated because Miller plays on the demigod aspect of both Helen and Achilles in a way that makes them steal any scene they’re in. There’s a quiet power to them that transcends the page.
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'Captivating' DONNA TARTT 'I loved it' J K ROWLING 'Ravishingly vivid' EMMA DONOGHUE
Greece in the age of heroes. Patroclus, an awkward young prince, has been exiled to the court of King Peleus and his perfect son Achilles. Despite their differences, Achilles befriends the shamed prince, and as they grow into young men skilled in the arts of war and medicine, their bond blossoms…
I’ve always been fascinated by stories of myth, magic, and ancient cultures. I grew up devouring everything I could get my hands on, but it seemed like voices were missing in so many myths and legends. Persephone isn’t even the main character in her own myth. Aphrodite, Helen, and countless other women were painted with the same depthless brush. I wanted to know their stories, and as I grew older, I realized I wanted to tell them. The authors of the books in this list are kindred spirits. Countless hours of research and reading went into these stories, and their love for the subject shines through the text.
Another perspective of the Trojan War from a minor player’s perspective, Daughter of Yesterday, is the first mythology retelling I read as a child, and it still holds up. A series of unfortunate events puts the protagonist in Helen of Troy’s household as a companion for her young daughter.
I’d never read a version of the myth that views Helen as a mother, an often-forgotten fact in retellings. Myths are so often taught in isolation that this was the first time I realized these mythological characters like Helen and Cassandra knew each other.
The fact that the main character is a completely powerless child trying her best to survive the chaos around her ramps up the tension and highlights the tragedy of the war.
Anaxandra is taken from her birth island at age 6 by King Nicander to be a companion to his crippled daughter, Princess Callisto. Six years later, her new island is sacked by pirates and she is the sole survivor. Alone with only her Medusa figurine, she reinvents herself as Princess Callisto when Menelaus, great king of Sparta, lands with his men. He takes her back to Sparta with him where Helen, his beautiful wife, does not believe that the red-headed child is Princess Callisto. Although fearful of the half-mortal, half-goddess Helen, Anaxandra is able to stay out of harm’s way—until…
I’ve always been fascinated by stories of myth, magic, and ancient cultures. I grew up devouring everything I could get my hands on, but it seemed like voices were missing in so many myths and legends. Persephone isn’t even the main character in her own myth. Aphrodite, Helen, and countless other women were painted with the same depthless brush. I wanted to know their stories, and as I grew older, I realized I wanted to tell them. The authors of the books in this list are kindred spirits. Countless hours of research and reading went into these stories, and their love for the subject shines through the text.
This book features a young Helen of Sparta’s adventures with her siblings, who are notable figures of their own in myths and legends. I’m a sucker for those mythological connections I first discovered in Goddess of Yesterday, and this is also very similar to it in that it might be marketed as a children’s book. Still, the themes and events are intense, and they hold up amazingly.
I love this version of Helen. She’s adventurous, smart, and stubborn. Helen is so often portrayed as a vain villain or an unwitting scapegoat, so it’s really refreshing to read something that acknowledges that she was more than just a pretty face. She was the princess of Sparta. She was raised to be tough, tactical, and warlike.
Helen of Sparta wants to be more than a princess and a pretty face—she wants to be a hero.
The traditions of ancient Sparta would have Helen know her place: a beautiful princess, a loyal daughter, a perfect bride. But Helen wants adventure, and she's not looking back. Not one to count on the gods to take care of her, she sets out to see the world and seek her own fate with steely determination. Her rebellious will makes Helen dangerous enemies—such as the self-proclaimed "son of Zeus" Theseus—but it also gains her true friends, from the famed huntress Atalanta…
I’ve always been fascinated by stories of myth, magic, and ancient cultures. I grew up devouring everything I could get my hands on, but it seemed like voices were missing in so many myths and legends. Persephone isn’t even the main character in her own myth. Aphrodite, Helen, and countless other women were painted with the same depthless brush. I wanted to know their stories, and as I grew older, I realized I wanted to tell them. The authors of the books in this list are kindred spirits. Countless hours of research and reading went into these stories, and their love for the subject shines through the text.
I was so excited when this book hit the shelves because the back cover copy read like it would be an adult version of Nobody’s Princess. They are very different books, but this one had the magic of interconnecting myths I craved.
Clytemnestra is featured as a dual protagonist, which was a bonus because I have never seen books that strongly feature Helen’s sister. It delves into the sisters' childhood and follows them through their adulthood into the Trojan War.
I loved how the book morphed from an almost fairy tale feel to a tragedy that perfectly captured the sense of frustration, helplessness, and devastation of the women embroiled in the Trojan War.
Two sisters parted. Two women blamed. Two stories reclaimed.
'Required reading for fans of Circe . . . a remarkable, thrilling debut' - Fiona Davis, New York Times bestselling author of The Lions of Fifth Avenue
'Fluent and persuasive. I admire the ambition with which Heywood tackles the subject, to which she brings freshness and verve. I enjoyed it very much' - Elizabeth Buchan, bestselling author of The Museum of Broken Promises
For millennia, two women have been blamed for the fall of a mighty civilisation - but now it's time to hear their side of the story . .…
As a kid, I was fascinated by Greek mythology. Through myth, I encountered many powerful female characters—Athena was my favorite—but I felt frustrated by how women’s lives were told in my books. My interest in Greek myth and curiosity about untold stories led me to become a Classics professor. I love teaching and writing about women in the ancient world, helping people to understand how they navigated their lives. Luckily for me, many recent books across various genres, from novels to translations to histories, have illuminated the lives of ancient women. There’s so much more to read than when I was growing up!
This book is an epic about a war fought over a woman (Helen, the “face that launched a thousand ships”), yet this is the first major translation by one. Emily Wilson’s translation sounds fresh and up-to-date yet stays closer to Homer than the versions I encountered growing up.
I love how Wilson treats Homer’s women, avoiding the clichés and derogatory language used by previous translators. And her work has the narrative drive that Homer deserves, making this very old, very familiar story a real page-turner.
When Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey appeared in 2017-revealing the ancient poem in a contemporary idiom that "combines intellectual authority with addictive readability" (Edith Hall, The Sunday Telegraph)-critics lauded it as "a revelation" (Susan Chira, The New York Times) and "a cultural landmark" (Charlotte Higgins, The Guardian) that would forever change how Homer is read in English. Now Wilson has returned with an equally revelatory translation of the first great Homeric epic: The Iliad.
In Wilson's hands, this exciting and often horrifying work now gallops at a pace befitting its battle scenes, roaring with the clamour of arms, the…
As a professor emeritus of history at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, over the years I’ve been widely mentioned as one of the world’s foremost experts on military theory and history. On these and other topics I have written 34 books, which between them have been published in 19 languages. I’ve also consulted with defense departments, taught and lectured all over the world, etc., etc.
The Iliadis not a book on strategy. Nor on tactics, nor on logistics, nor on command and control, nor on any other individual aspect of warfare about which any number of lesser authors have written. An epic poem, it provides an unparalleled panorama of men (and, playing a secondary yet crucially important role, a few women) at war: the hope, the despair, the fear, the elation, the kindness, the rage, the horror, the love and the sex (which both increases the horror and to some extent makes up for it). All intertwined, and all pulsating along with the human heart. Probably written down around 750 BCE, but making use of much older material, for almost three millennia now it has been regarded not just as a classic but as the greatest classic of all. Unquestionably it will continue doing so for millennia more.
In a companion volume to his award-winning adaptation of The Odyssey, the incomparable graphic novelist Gareth Hinds masterfully adapts Homer’s classic wartime epic.
More than three thousand years ago, two armies faced each other in an epic battle that rewrote history and came to be known as the Trojan War. The Iliad, Homer's legendary account of this nine-year ordeal, is considered the greatest war story of all time and one of the most important works of Western literature. In this stunning graphic novel adaptation — a thoroughly researched and artfully rendered masterwork — renowned illustrator Gareth Hinds captures all the…
I’ve been playing in the sandbox of Greek myth as a writer for two decades, and passionately absorbed by it for even longer. My mother raised us all to love ancient history, and I was further encouraged by my brother at age 7, who brought home a copy of Bulfinch and taught me the difference between Heracles and Hercules, cementing my delight and inspiring me to pursue a BA in Classical Studies. The result was not only my Helen of Sparta duology, by a plethora of other works exploring our relationships to the divine in the retelling of historically-grounded myths, some well-known, and some half-forgotten.
Hand of Fire was one of the first books to truly win me over on Achilles as a real hero worthy of romanticism and admiration. Starkston’s exploration of Briseis’s character and her relationship to and with Achilles is so well-wrought, pulling both from the Hittites (the empire in which Briseis was born) and the Greek mythology and archeology. The way she weaves the two cultures together to create this story, priming Briseis for Achilles’s arrival to create a narrative that gives Briseis both power and agency is absolutely masterful. I loved that Starkston didn’t shy away from the supernatural hallmarks of the Iliad, either, allowing the gods and their direct influence to breathe inside her retelling of the Trojan War.
Briseis steps out from the handful of lines she gets in Homer's epic, and fearlessly tells her own story as healer, war prize, and partner to the famous Achilles—here a godlike hero who manages to be all too human. Recommended! –Kate Quinn, NYT Times Bestselling author of The Alice Network
A legendary war, an invincible warrior, a woman forced to defend her family and realm—and her independent spirit. Will she become the captive or the captor?
Briseis struggles to protect her city, an ally of Troy, from marauding Greeks and her husband’s arrogant violence. She finds strength in visions of…
I write fiction set in the Bronze Age world of the Trojan War and the Hittite Empire. I love to combine history and archaeology with magic and fantasy arising from the ancient beliefs of this period. My novels bring women to the fore—whether the captive Briseis or a remarkable Hittite queen lost to human memory until recently. Armed with degrees in Classics, I have spent too much time exploring the remains of the ancient Greeks and Hittites through travel and research. From the beginning, the Trojan War tradition has left room for many variations. Here are five entirely different “takes” on this iconic war—all masterfully written.
Carosella offers another, refreshing take on Helen. This Helen takes control of her life and tries to defy fate (and the gods do their darndest, as usual in Greek mythology, to make her and everyone else miserable). Carosella’s engaging novel develops the characters’ jealousies, passions, and loyalties, as well as bringing the reader directly into the ancient Greek world. I enjoyed the sense of interconnectedness between different parts of this Greek and Mediterranean world, Troy, Sparta, Egypt, Mycenae, and Athens. This accurately reflects the current understanding of this exotic world. I appreciate a flexible view of all the legendary mythology surrounding this iconic war, and Carosella has flexed some impressive muscle.
Long before she ran away with Paris to Troy, Helen of Sparta was haunted by nightmares of a burning city under siege. These dreams foretold impending war-a war that only Helen has the power to avert. To do so, she must defy her family and betray her betrothed by fleeing the palace in the dead of night. In need of protection, she finds shelter and comfort in the arms of Theseus, son of Poseidon. With Theseus at her side, she believes she can escape her destiny. But at every turn, new dangers-violence, betrayal, extortion, threat of war-thwart Helen's plans and…
I spent my career teaching Classics, mostly at Oxford University, where I was a fellow of Lady Margaret Hall and Professor of the Classical Tradition. I have worked on the influence of the ancient world on British literature and culture, especially in the Victorian age, and when being a conventional classicist have written mostly about Latin literature and Roman culture. I have also written short books on Jane Austen and Westminster Abbey.
‘Wrath’ is the first word, beginning European literature not with the whimper of infancy but with a bang. The Iliad is ferociously intense, the action remarkably compressed in time and place, despite the poem’s great length (most of it takes place on the plain of Troy over two or three days). It is the quintessence of tragedy, declaring that the quest for glory, the hero’s duty, is inseparably bound up with humiliation and death. But it is a high-spirited tragedy, immensely energetic, with a lust for the ordinary appetites of life. Life is so good: that is what makes the warriors’ deaths so terrible. The gods look on, both fascinated and detached, and through their eyes we see man as both small and great. I recommend Martin Hammond’s prose translation.
'The best modern prose translation of The Iliad' Robin Lane Fox, The Times
The first of the world's great tragedies, The Iliad centres on the pivotal four days towards the end of the ten-year war between the Greeks and the Trojans. In a series of dramatic set pieces, it follows the story of the humiliation of Achilleus at the hands of Agamemnon and his slaying of Hektor: a barbarous act with repercussions that ultimately determine the fate of Troy. The Iliad not only paints an intimate picture of individual experience, but also offers a universal perspective in which human loss…
I’ve been playing in the sandbox of Greek myth as a writer for two decades, and passionately absorbed by it for even longer. My mother raised us all to love ancient history, and I was further encouraged by my brother at age 7, who brought home a copy of Bulfinch and taught me the difference between Heracles and Hercules, cementing my delight and inspiring me to pursue a BA in Classical Studies. The result was not only my Helen of Sparta duology, by a plethora of other works exploring our relationships to the divine in the retelling of historically-grounded myths, some well-known, and some half-forgotten.
This graphic novel is an absolute gift to anyone interested in both many of the lesser-known but no less fascinating narrative digressions of the Trojan War cycle and the visual exploration of what the late bronze age might have truly looked like. Shanower has given so much attention to period details and clothing, to the settings and backgrounds of palace, ship, and landscape. If you’re like me and you struggle to really see what the archaeological record has presented to us in rough floor plans and surviving artworks as a whole picture of life and living, this is an absolute must-read as a gorgeously illustrated narrative of the Trojan War—and the people who existed in the period we often refer to as Mycenean.
This new, fully colored edition brings the historical action within the
pages of AGE OF BRONZE to new, greater levels.
Daring heroes,
breathtaking women, betrayals, love and death--the most spectacular war story
ever told: The Trojan War. When a lustful Trojan prince abducts the beautiful
Queen Helen of Sparta, Helen`s husband vows to recover her no matter the cost.
So begins the Trojan War. From far and wide the ancient kings of Greece bring
their ships to join the massive force to pledge their allegiance to High King
Agamemnon. Featuring the greatest of the Greek heroes: Achilles, Odysseus, and
Herakles,…