Here are 94 books that Helen of Troy fans have personally recommended if you like
Helen of Troy.
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I’ve always been a big fan of sci-fi and fantasy, especially anything involving superheroes or D&D-style adventure. For the longest time, I had to find queer representation through subtle glances and creative readings of characters. I loved these stories for the sci-fi and fantasy elements, but it was frustrating that every love story that came up was straight. It didn’t feel possible for queer love to be a part of a plot, and even when there was a queer character it had a “very special episode” vibe to it. Finally, queer characters are becoming part of the story, and it doesn’t have to be a “big deal.”
The Song of Achilles is such as beautifully written book that perfectly weaves together a queer love story with a proper Greek epic.
It was so fulfilling to follow Patroclus and Achilles as they grew up. The attraction grows subtly and feels very natural. The fantasy elements feel very matter-of-fact and never take away from the incredibly relatable character moments.
**OVER 1.5 MILLION COPIES SOLD** **A 10th ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL EDITION, FEATURING A NEW FOREWORD BY THE AUTHOR**
WINNER OF THE ORANGE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION THE INTERNATIONAL SENSATION A SUNDAY TIMES AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
'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 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 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.
If a racially diverse, gender-bending, often raunchy, always nuanced, new take on an old tale sounds like a good read to you, then pick up this “novel-in-parts.” Both the racial and sexual fullness reflect historical reality, although they’ve ordinarily been left out. Retelling the Trojan War from its early causes to its tragic but still hope-infused end, the authors gave this rendition a compelling depth that will make you savor the old tradition with some new spice on your tongue.
Troy: city of gold, gatekeeper of the east, haven of the god-born and the lucky, a city destined to last a thousand years. But the Fates have other plans—the Fates, and a woman named Helen. In the shadow of Troy's gates, all must be reborn in the greatest war of the ancient world: slaves and queens, heroes and cowards, seers and kings . . . and these are their stories.
A young princess and an embittered prince join forces to prevent a fatal elopement.
A tormented seeress challenges the gods themselves to save her city from the impending disaster.
I’m an Egyptologist by training and a storyteller by nature. Fascinated by the origins of patriarchy since I was a small girl raised by strong women in a patriarchal context, I turned to Greek and Roman history for answers. I earned an MA and a richer understanding of the civilizations that influenced the classical period, which led to the study of Egypt and Mesopotamia and finally to a Ph.D. in Egyptology. At heart, I’m more creative than scholar. Telling stories that bring ancient Egypt to life and leave readers better informed of the challenges women have faced, and sometimes overcome, is my passion.
This one hooked me from the first words: “Sing, Muse.”
I always enjoy the wit Haynes brings to her work. And I love how this book pulls the reader into so many different points of view, creating a sweeping narrative. The craft of this one left me a bit stunned.
Plus, war is so often told as a man’s adventure. Here, Haynes shows the cost to women who are abandoned, enslaved, and widowed. As retellings go, this is a unique and clever reimagining.
In A Thousand Ships, broadcaster and classicist Natalie Haynes retells the story of the Trojan War from an all-female perspective, for fans of Madeline Miller and Pat Barker.
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…
In my teens, I read a book by Charles Berlitz titled Atlantis: the lost continent. I was enthralled and fascinated about this lost race of people, who were technically and sophisticated advance society and on one fateful day, vanished. My appetite for Greek mythology and ancient history grew from there, and I wanted to learn more about various ancient cultures and their mythologies. I eventually studied ancient history and continue my education as new archaeological discoveries and advancements are made. It wasn’t until a trip to Europe and seeing the Roman Forum and Colosseum, that I was inspired to write and combine my love for mythology and ancient history into historical fiction fantasy.
I’m cheating a little here by recommending a trilogy but this was one of the best historical fiction I’ve read.
The series is about Prince Aeneas and the legendary story of the war between the Trojans and the Greeks. David Gemmell sets the scene prior to war from the POV of Aeneas, who was regarded as pirate but as the story progresses you learn more about his actions and why he keeps roaming the sea.
It is full of action and stays true to the unfolding drama of the Trojan War. For me, the historical backdrop and the research the author included was one of the main reasons this series wins.
Three lives will change the destiny of nations. Hellkaon, the young prince of Dardania, haunted by a scarred and traumatic childhood. The priestess Andromache, whose fiery spirit and fierce Independence threatens the might of kings. And the legendary warrior Argurios, cloaked in loneliness and driven only by thoughts of revenge. In Troy they find a city torn apart by destructive rivalries - a maelstrom of jealousy, deceit and murderous treachery. And beyond its fabled walls blood-hungry enemies eye its riches and plot its downfall. It is a time of bravery and betrayal; a time of bloodshed and fear. A time…
History is my passion. I’m a graduate of medieval history from the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and post-graduate of London University. Former high school history teacher, and previously held the post of assistant researcher at the Museum of the Diaspora, Tel Aviv. I was commissioned by the Council of Zambian Jewry to research and write the history of Northern Rhodesian/Zambian Jewry. I have lectured frequently on my subjects and have contributed diverse historical articles in newspapers and journals. I have published six books, fiction, and non-fiction.
As a historian I have often felt the need to get to grips with the basis of western mythical-historical writing, meaning—Homer. After reading Mythos, I couldn’t resist reading Fry’s second book of his Greek mythology trilogy, and I was rewarded! Despite the often-confusing flood of Greek names of gods, Titans, divine mortals, etc. you can’t help enjoying this exciting read of Paris’ abduction of Helen of Sparta. As usual, Fry’s erudition is combined with side-splitting humor and wit. He has the brilliance to bring alive the ancient classical Homer’s Iliad to a modern-day audience.
AN EPIC BATTLE THAT LASTED TEN YEARS. A LEGENDARY STORY THAT HAS SURVIVED THOUSANDS.
'An inimitable retelling of the siege of Troy . . . Fry's narrative, artfully humorous and rich in detail, breathes life and contemporary relevance into these ancient tales' OBSERVER
'Stephen Fry has done it again. Well written and super storytelling' 5***** READER REVIEW ________
'Troy. The most marvellous kingdom in all the world. The Jewel of the Aegean. Glittering Ilion, the city that rose and fell not once but twice . . .'
When Helen, the beautiful Greek queen, is kidnapped by the Trojan prince Paris,…
The first movie I saw in the theater was Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. Since then, I’ve been obsessed with tales of good versus evil and coming-of-age stories that mix futuristic settings with real-world mythology and history. I moved to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career in hopes of swinging my own lightsaber one day. Along the way trained in martial arts and Shakespeare. Playing D&D with industry friends led to me writing my own sci-fi adventures and mixing elements of all those types of stories I loved growing up.
“Mythology, Shakespeare, Cthulhu, oh my!” Not as well-known as his most famous sci-fi work, Hyperion, Dan Simmon’s Ilium is just as impressive. The book bounces back and forth between characters of Greek myth reenacting the events of the Trojan War on the Martian plains, humans reawakening to their purpose on a post-apocalyptic Earth, and a pair of philosophizing robots, all in the shadow of a dark god coming to devour them all. The first in a duology, Ilium weaves its disparate storylines to a climax where readers solve the riddle of how it is that Lovecraft’s monsters are living alongside Shakespeare’s characters and Homer’s epic poem in a world that has suffered a mysterious cataclysm. Any reader of mythology and literary allusion in their speculative fiction will hungrily devour this book.
Taking the events and characters of the Iliad as his jumping- off point, Dan Simmons has created an epic of time travel and savage warfare. Travellers from 40,000 years in the future return to Homer's Greece and rewrite history forever, their technology impacting on the population in a godlike fashion.
This is broad scope space opera rich in classical and literary allusion, from one of the key figures in 1990s world SF. Ilium marks a return to the genre for one of its greats.
I became enthralled by the ancient world when as a child I first saw those sand and sandals movies back in the sixties, Ben Hur and Spartacus especially. I began learning Latin aged nine and Greek aged twelve. I started a Ph.D., abandoned it, went to drama school, became a schoolteacher, worked as a professional gardener, became a schoolteacher again, eventually finished my Ph.D., and was lucky to get a job at Colgate University. Over time I realised that what really fascinated me about history was trying to insert myself imaginatively into the ancient world, so I began to ask questions about what it was like to be disabled, to be a refugee, to be a child, and so on.
This book made a deep impact on me when I first read it decades ago and it influenced me in the way I try to understand and write history to this day. I’d already read The Odyssey when I encountered Finley’s book, but Finley made me believe in a world that became real despite being imaginary. The World of Odysseus is an amalgam of the half-remembered world in which it is set – the twelfth century BC – and of the world in which Homer was composing – the eighth century BC – and of the big gap in between the two, known as the Dark Ages.
It’s a completely artificial world but it’s wholly convincing and coherent – a world, incidentally, dominated by a large cast of formidable women. Finley provides by far the best introduction to it, and he writes in an engaging, unpedantic, highly accessible, and informative…
The World of Odysseus is a concise and penetrating account of the society that gave birth to the Iliad and the Odyssey--a book that provides a vivid picture of the Greek Dark Ages, its men and women, works and days, morals and values. Long celebrated as a pathbreaking achievement in the social history of the ancient world, M.I. Finley's brilliant study remains, as classicist Bernard Knox notes in his introduction to this new edition, "as indispensable to the professional as it is accessible to the general reader"--a fundamental companion for students of Homer and Homeric Greece.
I've been fond of the Homeric poems since my youth. I followed classical studies in the high here in Rome, so I studied Latin and Greek before graduating in nuclear engineering. Then, in addition to my professional activity, I've devoted myself to the study of The Iliad and the Odyssey, with their huge contradictions between geography and their traditional Mediterranean setting. The book I published on this topic was translated and published into eight foreign languages (as The Baltic Origins of Homer's Epic Tales), and has given rise to many scientific discussions. I also published The Mysteries of the Megalithic Civilization, a Bestseller here in Italy.
This book explores many important, controversial aspects of Heinrich Schliemann's Trojan searches in the second half of the 19th century. The reading is very interesting both to deepen the details of that archaeological discovery, considered one of the most important of the nineteenth century, and to better understand the controversial figure of Schliemann, who in addition to his great merits also presents some not small shadows.
Using correspondence and diary entries, the author recounts the personal and professional life of the archaeologist and exposes an unscrupulous individual who distorted facts and made false claims about some of his discoveries.
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,…
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