Black Ships

There's nothing I love so much as sinking into a big fat book that combines the sweep of history with a dash of magic. This book is an adaptation of the Aeneid, from the point of view of the Sybil who, in the poem, guides Aeneas through the underworld. She's a lot more fleshed out here. Her name is Gull, later known as Linnea and as Pythia, and jumps off the page from the very beginning of chapter one with a self-introduction that reminded me a bit of Phedre's at the beginning of Kushiel's Dart. The wording and the voice are different, but it's the same sort of introduction: This is me. This is who I am. Take me or leave me--and if you take me, I've got a damn good story to tell you. Gull is the daughter of a Trojan slave. When she is crippled in an accident, her mother realizes she'll be seen as a useless mouth to King Nestor. She takes the girl to be apprenticed to Pythia, an oracle and priestess of Persephone, the Lady of the Dead. In time Gull succeeds to the role of Pythia herself, and it seems that she will spend the rest of her life prophesying from her remote cave. Fate, however, has other plans. Aeneas and his ragged band of refugees from Troy arrive to raid Nestor's palace, and Gull's life is forever changed. (Oh, I should explain that Graham posits two separate Trojan Wars in this tale. Gull's mother was abducted in the first; Aeneas fled the city in the second.) The novel follows Aeneas, Gull, and Aeneas's courageous and sexy captain, Xandros, as they search for a place to call home. To me, one of the major themes of Black Ships is being human in a world that calls for larger-than-life gods and heroes. You see it with Gull, who operates within a strict set of rules as a priestess, and then throughout the story breaks most of them when the will of the Goddess or the needs of her people demand flexibility. You see it with Neas, whose father is constantly exhorting him to act in a more regal fashion. One of my favorite bits is when Gull is examining the cave near Vesuvius that she will use for the ritual of descent into the underworld, musing about how much work it will take to prepare it--and yet, though she works hard to ready the cave, when the ritual occurs it is governed by forces beyond her human control. I liked the contrast between the human and divine here. The other major theme is love, and how these three flawed and scarred people find it with each other. I love that you can't clearly say "this character is gay, that one is straight." What it really comes down to is that these three people have a bond that transcends all categories. They're just...well, when reading this book I just can't imagine any of them without the other two. Beautiful book, and I loved every minute of it. I just wish it had been longer. ;) (And, y'know, I really ought to go read the Aeneid. I never did read the whole thing, though I was supposed to for class once, and Jo has made me more intrigued by it.)

Few things are more fun than a book that gives you a better read than you expected. Black Ships has a promising but not particularly unique premise: It's an epic, the Aeneid, told from the viewpoint of an important character other than the hero. I expected an enjoyable read but little more. I soon realized, though, that Black Ships is not only entertaining but thoroughly engrossing. The story is told by Gull, or as she is known variously throughout the book, Linnea, Pythia (the voice of the Lady of the Dead), and Sybil. When little more than a teen, she become a trusted adviser to Neas, or Aeneas as he is more formally known, and guides him and his band of refugees from Troy around the Mediterranean to the eventual founding of Rome. As an oracle, she provides words of wisdom when necessary--sometimes her own, sometimes those of the goddess she serves. Along the way, Gull grows into a woman, and it is her personal narrative that separates the story from a standard sword-and-sorcery fantasy. She has doubts, not of her religion, but in herself and her ability to provide the guidance her people seek. She often doubts her own motivations, too, questioning whether she is choosing the right thing for the wrong reason or vice versa, a moral quandary that she's not always able to answer, even with the help of the gods. Watching her fall in love, struggle with the need to sacrifice her own desires for the good of the people, and deal with tragic losses both personal and communal make the book worth reading. On top of it all is a well-paced plot full of battles where most of the blood is spilled off-stage, palace intrigues, violent storms at sea, and an enemy who shows up at the worst possible times hell-bent on destroying the Trojans. The novel is full of fascinating period detail and history--some real and some well-imagined. Jo Graham has a nice touch with the frequent passages of mysticism, which are usually pertinent to the story and carry just the right amount of solemnity without becoming portentous. Black Ships is something you don't find often--a page-turner with refinement.

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 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 takes on 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 Aeneas' oracle, she leads a king and her lost people into their future - they claim a new world, and sow the seeds of the Roman Empire. 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 a woman's voice 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. "Twice we cross the River," I said. "When we die, we cross this river, which

I was fortunate enough to get, through a mutual friend, an advance copy of Jo Graham's Black Ships. It hit the bookstores last week, and it's a ripping good read. The book tells the story of Gull, daughter of a slave taken from Troy by victorious Achaeans and raised as an oracle of the Lady of the Dead. A vision allows Gull to recognize Prince Aeneas when he comes to rescue Trojan slaves from their captivity, and she joins them and guides their journey around the Mediterranean to their new homeland, the future site of Rome. The novel is set in the waning days of the Age of Bronze, as the civilizations of the region reel, nations collapsing or being overwhelmed by the onslaught of displaced raiders. It's a detailed, moving retelling of Virgil's Aeneid, chock-full of tasty little historical tidbits that root it firmly in a period of history that is not known in detail.

The books I truly love are wildly different from one another; everything from ancient epics to contemporary romance novels, stories of wars or journeys or love or everything in between. Cathy Cash Spellman's Paint the Wind is one of my beloveds, the American west, a young woman named Fancy who loves more than once, and becomes something different than she was. Compare that to something like the Odyssey - old Greek men cavorting about the Mediterranean. So why do I cry when Fancy's great love dies of a gunshot wound to the thigh, and when Odysseus's faithful dog Argos lays down his head and shuts his eyes for the last time? What is it about stories that move us to tears, how do they do it? How does one create such compelling new worlds, or old ones, worlds rich with ships and vineyards groves of olives trees? One olive tree - or word - at a time, as Jo Graham's narrator, Gull, finally learns. As Gull, also addressed as Pythia, Sybil, or simply Lady, travels in search of a new land, she wonders constantly: why? She sees her world - the mysterious crisis of 1200 B.C. - crumbling around her, the great cities gone, the old ways changing. She wants to help, and she tries, through her office as the servant of the Lady of the Dead, or through her own wisdom and gut. She questions and prompts, she seeks and mends and encourages. She closes the eyes of the dying and gives them peace. She knows it is beyond her power to resurrect the dead. That, however, is exactly what Black Ships does, as a novel; it brings a long-dead past to life. Jo Graham breathes life into Aeneas, or Neas, to everyone who knows him personally, of course. He is the king he was born to be, and yet endlessly human, and in need of guidance, of strength, and even a little luck. He is the man who everyone loves, and yet he does not prevent anyone from loving someone else; consider one of the captains who follows him faithfully across the world, Xandros, who is hunky and always-honorable, except when he's part of a sneaky plot as a means to an end (pirate) . (And why does that name give me delightful chills? Because it begins with an X? Because it's so thoroughly ancient? Because it sounds a little like "Vandross"? ) Xandros is lively, too, all too human, and we forgive him his weakness for young temple attendants (when we know Gull watches him longingly from the shadows) because we understand he's lost far too much to love easily. But even more remarkable than the characters who spring fully-formed from the pages, is the world they inhabit. The reader accompanies Gull on her travels, across a restless and often destructive sea, to the cities of the ancient world, and even to Egypt. One of the most beautiful parts of the Aeneid is Book Four, where Aeneas joins Dido at a banquet in Carthage and she falls in love with his stories. We're at that banquet, too, except it's in Memphis, where we find a much less anachronistic Dido than Virgil's, by the name of Princess Basetamon.