Black Ships
by Jo Graham
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Book Summary Information
Author: Jo GrahamEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-03-10
ISBN: 0316068004
Number of pages: 431
Publisher: Orbit
Book Reviews of Black Ships
Book Review: A Bronze Age World That Transcends Fantasy
Summary: 5 Stars
BLACK SHIPS
By Jo Graham
Orbit Books, Imprint of Little, Brown Book Group
I understand this is a first novel. I'm more than impressed because I wouldn't have guessed if I hadn't read that fact. It's a mature, polished work handled with the authority of a thoughtful, seasoned life.
All the more because it takes a story we all supposedly knew from high school and revisits it in terms we never imagined.
The tale of the fall of Troy and the eventual triumph of Prince Aeneas has been treated as a heroic epic and as a Bronze Age historical novel, but I've not seen it given such human dimension as through the eyes of the slave girl-become-oracle, Gull. All the characters are given development from man to woman, from child to adult. But it is her gift that imbues the story with glimpses of larger worlds beyond the span of brief mortality.
"Black Ships" may in part be marketed as a fantasy, but that label shortchanges the careful attention to historical information and cultural context. Also far beyond sword and sorcery, the story becomes in time a meditation on change, timelessness and the unquenchable nature of spirit as even Gull discovers possibilities and unexpected gifts from the Lady she serves that she never thought would alter the course of her life.
Stories like this one are often characterized as beautiful in language and haunting in viewpoint. "Black Ships" is all of that but the rich language is not simply an affectation but reinforces the larger themes and forms rising like ghostly giants over the narrative. It is haunting, but also covers the range of human emotion and motive from scalding irony to love steadfast to death; characters ready to embrace their darkest ambitions or strive to be more than they think they can be.
This is the first book in a world the author characterizes as "numinous", a term that suggests to me "Magic Realism" more that fantasy alone. This one is an elegiac, beautiful page-turner...it's also ABOUT something.
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