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djarum99
, April 13, 2009
Black Ships is a portrait of late Bronze Age heroism, the Aeneid retold at the most intimate level, a chronicle of epic events as witnessed by soldiers, seers and kings. Aeneas steps from the page as a living man; the oracle Gull, Graham’s protagonist, narrates with a woman’s voice and a sibyl’s wisdom. The book’s language is deceptively simple, evoking a depth of descriptive resonance and emotion that owes a great deal to the author’s knowledge of history, recorded legend, and of love.
Ultimately, that is what Black Ships celebrates, for me - love, and the faith and strength required to choose it in the face of desperation, loss, and hatred. Love as a force in the universe. Graham’s characters are men and women who accept life’s pain and the sacrifices it demands, without abandoning hope and compassion. This is also the story of the shades of gray that lie between, the complexity of our choices, of lives twisted by darkness and the bitter toll that exacts from us all.
Gull is born a slave in the Greek city of Pylos, to a daughter of fallen Wilusa, the ancient city we know as Troy. She is given to the Lady of the Dead as an avatar, a visionary and a priestess - she dreams the past, the future, and of the black ships that are her destiny. Aeneas leads the remnants of Troy’s great fleet on a voyage to rescue their women and children from enslavement in Pylos, and Gull joins them in their search for sanctuary, a place of peace and renewed hope. As Pythia, the sibyl who stands apart, she cannot marry, but she does love - Aeneas himself, and Xandros, his steadfast captain. She bears children, shares her life with a good man while guiding a reluctant king.
Gull’s story is mythic, and very human; as an oracle, she leads Aeneas and her lost people into their future. As a woman, she loves and grieves, fierce and compassionate and strong. At the heart of her journey is the gradual fusion of her faith and her humanity, and that is the magic of this book, the rich spell Graham weaves from one woman’s life and the tenacity of the human spirit.
Egypt, drowned cities, earthquakes, a Pharaoh’s mad daughter, a City of Pirates and the haunted caves of Mount Vesuvius - this book is adventure and passion and tragedy spun from words that craft a rich and complex world, dangerous and vibrant and alive. You will lose yourself in its pages, taste the dust of Memphis, feel the winds that sing to the Isle of the Dead, breathe the green scent of Latium beneath an ancient summer sun. Aeneas, Gull, and Xandros will live in your heart long after you read the final page.
Gull and her People have haunted me since I read the book’s first paragraph. Beneath the surface of recorded history’s beginnings, Graham has painted a numinous world of half-remembered lives, built on a mythology of life and death that is both terrible and joyous.
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