Black Ships (Graham)
Jan. 15th, 2026 07:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cahnThis book, via selenak, was just very relevant to my interests and I adored it so much! It's one of those books that I didn't really want to end. It's a retelling of the Aeneid from the point of view of the Sybil, with nods towards making it Bronze-Age historically plausible.
Gull begins her life as the daughter of a slave in Pylos, and is apprenticed to the Pythia, the oracle of the Lady of the Dead, becoming Pythia herself when the current Pythia dies. After Troy (here called Wilusa) is sacked for the second time, the black ships of the Wilusan prince Aeneas and the remnants of his people land in Pylos to try to capture back some of their people who had been slaves (including Gull's mother, though by that time she has died). When they depart, Gull/Pythia goes with them as their Sybil on their sea adventures as the People search for a home...
I just really loved so many things about this, starting with that retellings of epic poems are always my jam. I loved Gull/Pythia and the way in which centering her and her experiences centers the lived experience of the women of Wilusa. I loved the way that Aeneas and the Wilusans are portrayed as refugees, because that's what they are. I loved that the gods, while they do appear on the edges, are mysterious beings that may be real and may be wholly belief; and that they aren't toddler-level petty and vindictive like in the Aeneid. I loved how Pythia and Xandros had that sort of fealty-love thing going with Aeneas, uh, not that this is a hardcore thing I love or anything.
Of course I was very curious about how Dido would be portrayed, even without knowing (as Graham says in her afterword) that Carthage didn't... actually... exist during this time period, so that Aeneas & Dido would have to at the very least be revamped. Dido becomes Princess Basetamon of Egypt, and an interesting figure -- clearly very canny and a good politician, but also having had some traumatic experiences resulting in present-day issues. I don't think this would have worked had we not had enough other women's experiences in the book to balance it out, but as it is I think it did work and did make sense of all the somewhat-contradictory ways that Dido is portrayed in the Aeneid. Latinus and Lavinia, as the representatives of the kingdom in Italy that Aeneas and his folks end up with, also come across way better here than I thought they did in the Aeneid. (I was also a bit amused that Latinus' wife Amata does not appear at all. I was not impressed by her in the Aeneid.)
I also love all the hints of myths and stories that are seeded here. There's a reference to what I think has to be a proto-Beowulf. But the most intriguing one is the Island of the Dead, which used to host a lovely and fine kingdom -- "But somehow they angered the gods. The mountain exploded and destroyed it all" -- which was in Aeneas' great-grandfather's boyhood, but sounds terribly familiar to me -- are these the Phaeacians who might have gotten folded in a mountain?? -- and also may have caused a tidal wave that, she later finds out, the Egyptians have records of, which made the water rush out so that the Egyptians could ride in their chariots on the bottom of the sea as if they had been on land?? While the volcano was visible as a pillar of smoke by day and pillar of fire by night???? I might have flailed a lot at this point!
The one part I thought was slightly irritating was that Pythia is told very strongly at the beginning that she can't marry because she belongs to the Lady of the Dead. She also has various taboos, such as not being able to see blood being shed. Then the book basically goes on to cheerfully ignore all of these things. Sometimes she sees blood being shed and is like "welp, wasn't supposed to do that!" She has a long-running romance with Xandros (this is not really a spoiler, he's basically set up as the love interest as soon as she meets him) that involves them being together their whole lives, having kids and a life together... I don't really understand how this is different from marriage. I mean, like, why make a big deal out of this if it's not actually going to be a thing? But it's a relatively small part of the book.
One of the things that's really interesting here is the through-line of how the world is getting worse, piracy is getting worse, civilization is crumbling. Gull/Pythia can see that all of this is getting worse during her journeys with the black ships, and has gotten worse since the previous Pythia's days. And yet, as the reader knows, and as Pythia comes to dimly see, the arc of civilization since that time will curve upwards, and Aeneas will be part of that. (And I find this a somewhat comforting thought in some ways...)
I'm rather impressed that this was Graham's first book, which I had no idea about until I finished and went looking for more books by her! Occasionally there may have been a bit of unevenness, but all in all I thought it was extremely strong. Sooooo now I'm gonna reread Judith Tarr's Lord of the Two Lands to get myself in a proper Alexander mood, and then I shall go on to read Graham's Stealing Fire :D
selenak, was just very relevant to my interests and I adored it so much! It's one of those books that I didn't really want to end. It's a retelling of the Aeneid from the point of view of the Sybil, with nods towards making it Bronze-Age historically plausible. Gull begins her life as the daughter of a slave in Pylos, and is apprenticed to the Pythia, the oracle of the Lady of the Dead, becoming Pythia herself when the current Pythia dies. After Troy (here called Wilusa) is sacked for the second time, the black ships of the Wilusan prince Aeneas and the remnants of his people land in Pylos to try to capture back some of their people who had been slaves (including Gull's mother, though by that time she has died). When they depart, Gull/Pythia goes with them as their Sybil on their sea adventures as the People search for a home...
I just really loved so many things about this, starting with that retellings of epic poems are always my jam. I loved Gull/Pythia and the way in which centering her and her experiences centers the lived experience of the women of Wilusa. I loved the way that Aeneas and the Wilusans are portrayed as refugees, because that's what they are. I loved that the gods, while they do appear on the edges, are mysterious beings that may be real and may be wholly belief; and that they aren't toddler-level petty and vindictive like in the Aeneid. I loved how Pythia and Xandros had that sort of fealty-love thing going with Aeneas, uh, not that this is a hardcore thing I love or anything.
Of course I was very curious about how Dido would be portrayed, even without knowing (as Graham says in her afterword) that Carthage didn't... actually... exist during this time period, so that Aeneas & Dido would have to at the very least be revamped. Dido becomes Princess Basetamon of Egypt, and an interesting figure -- clearly very canny and a good politician, but also having had some traumatic experiences resulting in present-day issues. I don't think this would have worked had we not had enough other women's experiences in the book to balance it out, but as it is I think it did work and did make sense of all the somewhat-contradictory ways that Dido is portrayed in the Aeneid. Latinus and Lavinia, as the representatives of the kingdom in Italy that Aeneas and his folks end up with, also come across way better here than I thought they did in the Aeneid. (I was also a bit amused that Latinus' wife Amata does not appear at all. I was not impressed by her in the Aeneid.)
I also love all the hints of myths and stories that are seeded here. There's a reference to what I think has to be a proto-Beowulf. But the most intriguing one is the Island of the Dead, which used to host a lovely and fine kingdom -- "But somehow they angered the gods. The mountain exploded and destroyed it all" -- which was in Aeneas' great-grandfather's boyhood, but sounds terribly familiar to me -- are these the Phaeacians who might have gotten folded in a mountain?? -- and also may have caused a tidal wave that, she later finds out, the Egyptians have records of, which made the water rush out so that the Egyptians could ride in their chariots on the bottom of the sea as if they had been on land?? While the volcano was visible as a pillar of smoke by day and pillar of fire by night???? I might have flailed a lot at this point!
The one part I thought was slightly irritating was that Pythia is told very strongly at the beginning that she can't marry because she belongs to the Lady of the Dead. She also has various taboos, such as not being able to see blood being shed. Then the book basically goes on to cheerfully ignore all of these things. Sometimes she sees blood being shed and is like "welp, wasn't supposed to do that!" She has a long-running romance with Xandros (this is not really a spoiler, he's basically set up as the love interest as soon as she meets him) that involves them being together their whole lives, having kids and a life together... I don't really understand how this is different from marriage. I mean, like, why make a big deal out of this if it's not actually going to be a thing? But it's a relatively small part of the book.
One of the things that's really interesting here is the through-line of how the world is getting worse, piracy is getting worse, civilization is crumbling. Gull/Pythia can see that all of this is getting worse during her journeys with the black ships, and has gotten worse since the previous Pythia's days. And yet, as the reader knows, and as Pythia comes to dimly see, the arc of civilization since that time will curve upwards, and Aeneas will be part of that. (And I find this a somewhat comforting thought in some ways...)
I'm rather impressed that this was Graham's first book, which I had no idea about until I finished and went looking for more books by her! Occasionally there may have been a bit of unevenness, but all in all I thought it was extremely strong. Sooooo now I'm gonna reread Judith Tarr's Lord of the Two Lands to get myself in a proper Alexander mood, and then I shall go on to read Graham's Stealing Fire :D
