Our Grade:
Title: Black Ships
Author: Jo Graham
Publication Info: Orbit 2008, ISBN: 0314068004
Genre: Historical: Other
And then there this book. It’s not a romance. It does not have a happy ending as per a romance novel. It has a peaceful ending. There’s a big ol multi-sided love triangle with mutiple layers going around and around. There’s adventure on the high seas, oracles, war, parables, retellings of mythology, and very delicious men. But this is not a romance.
However, I read it, and I have a few things to say, but this won’t be like my normal romance reviews where I go off on some tangent about man-titty or swords or something.
Gull is a young girl born of rape, whose mother was taken in the sack of Wilusa, the Hittite word for Troy. After an accident that hobbles her leg, Gull is chosen to be an acolyte to the Lady of the Dead, and she sees visions of future events, starting with an omen of black ships. The black ships arrive, carrying the remnants of her lost home after yet another sack of Wilusa, and she sails away with them, even though doing so violates many of the rules of being the Dead’s handmaiden. Gull walks between knowing what the future will look like and not knowing when it’ll show up, and not knowing at all what will happen to her or to the tiny portion of Wilusa that travels with her.
The beginning of the story is demanding. It demands your attention and your time, and it demands that you not put the book down because something is always about to happen within the first few chapters, to the point where reading becomes an exercise in apprehension. In addition, the visual imagery used in the opening scenes is bleak - white paints, black cloaks, white stones, black ships - and belies the complexity and nuances of the story ahead of it.
And the story....
If you are disturbed by discussions of war, by depictions of battle, death, and the harm of children or the rape of women, I would caution you about reading this book. I’m immensely disturbed by these things, and I have to remind myself that I’m still “post partum” with hormones and hair loss to match (oh, my freaking God, the hair loss) and I need to be cautious when I pick up material like this.
That said, this book was important to read right now, not only because it’s haunting and vivid, but it raises questions about war, about the wars that are being fought right now, and about defining countries and societies, and about how we treat prisoners of war and the widows and fatherless children left behind after battle. This story is based on the Aeneid, so fans of that particular time in history will be happy as clams in mud, but because it’s about war and the loss and recovery of peace, it also matters as a reflection of current times.
Moreover, while the writing is often elementary in tone and the heroine didn’t grow so much as grow older, the imagery and the characters - particularly the men, Neas, Xandros, Kos, and Hyl - are marvelously crafted and vividly entertaining. The flaws and distance in Gull, who is held apart from the group both by her vocation as an Oracle and her role as observer, not quite a member of the group and too important to be left behind, lessened my attachment to her, but through her observations I deeply appreciated the other characters.
Gull was my biggest problem with the book, which is difficult because she’s the narrator. She’s a reliable narrator in that she’s not given to deluding herself, but I found myself losing patience with her, and with the story. Gull’s role as avatar for the Lady of the Dead means that she’s an oracle, and as such she’s telling the reader the story as she’s telling the other characters pieces of stories. It wasn’t until the last third that Gull took actions on her own that weren’t at the direction of the Lady, and I wished I’d seen more of the contrast between her own life and that of her office as the Lady’s oracle. I thought sometimes she was merely a window through which to view the story just as she was a voice for the Lady of the Dead, and with my experience with other books of historical fiction, I wanted to connect more with her than I could.
Deciding how to grade this book was a challenge, and I almost didn’t review it because it didn’t fit in the existing rubric of romance novel grades assigned in years prior. However, the book held my attention and even when it hurt to read I kept going, through images that twisted my heart and made me shudder. This story leaves an aftermath in the reader.
Graham tackles some huge subjects in this book, such as peace and war, as I’ve mentioned, and what happens when children become parents but still must answer to their own parents, or, as in the case of Neas, be a parent to a society while still growing up and having to grow up quickly. Graham’s writing style is spare - at times I felt like I was reading a novel meant for an elementary reading level for the simplicity of the dialogue - but the imagery left behind after the words is bleak, and meaningful. This book will definitely leave an impression. And it will make you appreciate peace when you have it, and hold it all the tighter for its fragility.
