Achilles did not fight alone.

 So, once again, another title showed up on my radar, and I wound up finding a copy. 

A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes opens with narration by the muse Calliope, who's complaining a bit about the poet telling her to "Sing, Muse!" She has several interstitial passages in a similar vein, discussing how the poet is upset that she won't give him details he wants, even as she sings the stories of the women involved in or left behind during The Trojan War, or in Penelope's case, the Odyssey. 

For the most part, this mainly concerns the women of Troy and their various fates at the hands of the victorious Greeks, although we do hear of Penelope, Clytemnestra, Iphigenia. and Electra. 

We hear of Polyxena, who goes to her sacrifice  at Neoptolemus to be his father's bride, we sit with Andromache as she cries over her youngest son being thrown from the walls of destroyed Troy. We feel Hecabe's anger, at the Greeks for killing her husband as he clings to a statue of Zeus, as she blames Helen for bringing war to Troy, as Odysseus grants her a chance for revenge on the man who killed the son she managed to get out of Troy. We get Cassandra's story and Clytemnestra's story entwined, even as we hear how the Furies left her after killing Agamemnon only to find her daughter Electra ready to take vengeance on her mother. 

We also get deep into the start of the war, going backwards from the three goddesses arguing over an apple to Eris finding the apple to throw in the first place, to Zeus asking Themis to step in to help lower the population, to Gaia telling Zeus the humans weigh too much and the population needs culled. 

By far the most heartbreaking story in here are Penelope's letters to her Husband, that chart is journey back from Troy. She tells him tales the Bards sing of him in his court, and how annoyed she is at him if any of them are true. Towards the end, when he sleeps in their bed, she prays to Athene, and a side unseen in Homer comes out where she wonders if the man who came home is still the same man that left. 

 Of all the women, poor Andromache winds up with the best lot, living in Greece and married to a former Trojan prince in a place that isn't quite Troy. (Ok, Helen did better, but her defense of being enraptured by Aphrodite really doesn't seem to be expected to be believed.)

While this didn't hit me with quite the same emotional impact as say Madeline Miller's Song of Achilles or Circe, more than a few of the stories in here did have me feeling lots of empathy for the women. Frankly, any of our various focus characters in here could use a novel just on them, telling their story more fully for a modern audience not looking to dig through poetic fragments for hints of what they missed. Or in Cassandra's case, something better than The Firebrand by Marion Zimmer Bradly, one of the few books I've ever been tempted to throw across a room when reading. Heck, I'd be interested in reading her take on Dido, who she mentions she couldn't find a way to fit in the book. 

I know several people with interests in Greek Mythology, and this book would likely be a good addition to their libraries as well.