Excellent - as engaging and well written as the ‘The Silence of the Girls’, the little-considered experience of the women in the stories of the Trojan War

What an incredible story!

Pat Barker's The Women of Troy follows the experiences of the women captured at the Fall of Troy and how their lives had changed so completely in the days immediately following. The story is told primarily through the eyes of Briseis, a Trojan woman who had been in the Greek camp for some time, as the slave and concubine of the great Achilles.

Briseis tries to help the Trojan women, many of them from the royal family, adjust to their new reality, as slaves to the various Greek kings who had besieged their city for the last 10 years.

The story is an interesting concept, with the other leading witnesses being Phyrrus (Achilles' son) and Calchas (a Trojan seer working for the Greek king of kings, Agamemnon).

The events take place in the Greek camp in the days following Troy's destruction, with a strong wind blowing off the sea that has trapped the Greeks on the beach with no chance to return home until it drops or turns.

The author has a wonderful way with words and draws you into the story from the very beginning. It is impossible not to become embroiled in the lives of these women, and in the total shift in reality caused by the destruction of their city, and their fathers, husbands and sons following the Greek decree that no Trajan male should be left alive.

The Women of Troy offers a new and completely absorbing perspective of the Trojan Wars and their aftermath.

It is, quite simply, impossible to put down.

A superb continuation of a feminist retelling of the Trojan War. Well developed characters and overall an engrossing read.

What an absolutely fantastic and engaging read. Pat Barker does it again! She expertly weaves mythology and emotion, allowing the forgotten and silenced voices a voice. She will always be a pick up author for me when it comes to Greek Mythology retellings. Highly recommend!

Wanted to love it because I adore Greek Myth retellings but sadly I just didn't connect with this story. Would happily read another Briseis tale now that she's leaving the Trojan shores but found this to be a slow simmer rather than a burn.

It was a treat to receive from Netgalley a new back by such an acclaimed author as Pat Barker. This reworking of the story of the Trojan Wars did not disappoint. The events are seen though the eyes of the women who survived the fall of Troy. It brought vividly to life names from Homer’s Iliad andVirgil’s Aeneid. An excellent read.

This book was so informative and fun!! As a huge greek mysthology nerd I really enjoyed hearing different sides to the stories, and new parts to the history! Overall hugely reccommend, especially for a fun read if you are studying classics

The Women of Troy picks up where The Silence of the Girls finished. Greece has won. The men of Troy are dead, their wealth and women now belong to the Greeks, but due to the fact that the wind is blowing in the wrong direction, the Greeks are going nowhere. Someone must have done something to displease the Gods, but until they come to that conclusion, there’s a lot of eating, drinking, sports competitions and rape. The women, as is usual in any conflict, get the shitty end of the stick. They may not have been killed, but they face a lifetime of slavery and rape.

Briseis is lucky, in that she is now married to Alcimus and is now a respectable, protected woman. But she now feels as though she belongs to neither side. She knows how the female slaves feel: she was one of them once. But they don’t see her as one of them anymore, and she isn’t wholly Greek either. She does manage to see the main female characters from Troy, though. Cassandra makes an appearance - she is still telling everyone what will happen, and on one is believing her. Hecuba is being kept in comfort by Odysseus, but she has seen all but one of her sons killed, and her husband is lying unburied on the beach - she wants to see him sent off to the afterlife before she dies.

We even see Helen and how she’s getting on. Her husband has taken her back, but no one else can see why she hasn’t been killed. After all, she’s to blame for the whole situation, isn’t she?!

Amina is Briseis’ own slave, given to her by Alcimus. It’s clear that she doesn’t like Briseis - after all, Briseis hasn’t tried to convince Agamemnon to have proper funeral rites for Priam. I liked Amina. She stands by her convictions, no matter the consequences (and there are consequences).

In fact, they’re all strong women, trying their best in very difficult circumstances. I always enjoy Greek mythology re-telling, and this book really does it for me. I’d love to see if Pat Barker writes about the times after the Greeks return to their homes. What happens to Cassandra? Helen? And Briseis? Yes, I know I can look it up in any Greek mythology book, but Pat Barkers storytelling is so emotive and really compelling. I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed!

I found this to be ok. Well written certainly but just not a story that really gripped and didn't really have any great concern for any of the main characters.

Such a good book! First of all, the cover is gorgeous and so stunning that I had to look at it for a long minute. Like her previous book, this one was enthralling and even though the subject is quite popular, I found Barker's voice to be quite distinct such that her prose stood out from the rest.

I loved Pat Barkers first Greek Mythology installment The Silence of the Girls and the continuation of the story of Briseis and the other women in The Women of Troy was another hit for me.

I am a big fan of mythology retellings and anyone with a similar interest will find this book captivating and intriguing, offering an insight into the lives of very well-known characters.

I was super excited to read this after The Silence of the Girls being one of my top reads of 2019 but sadly lightning didn't strike twice and it just fell flat for me.

The Women of Troy continues where the first book Silence of the Girls left off.
The story follows Briseis and the other women who are taken as slaves when the Trojan Horse infiltrates the walls of Troy.

I requested this book as I had enjoyed the first installment, however, I found this sequel a struggle to finish. The story dragged at times and despite the multiple point of views, the narration felt stale unlike in Silence of the Girls.

Overall, there was a lot of heart in this book, however I didn't find the overall stories captivating enough to warrant a higher rating .

I love Pat Barker, but not having read the first in this series or having the general knowledge of Greek mythology I struggled with the number of characters and who they were. The intro with the description inside the TYrojan Horse was gripping, but after that it seemed to be a different novel. Fans of mythology will like but I really didn't get it.

What a great read this was, I found it un putdownable. Such a clever idea to look at the aftermath of the Trojan war from the womans point of view. They really were so badly abused, There was areal sense of the camaraderie and loyalty of the women and the dilemas that they were faced. with. So looking forward to part 3…

‘The Women of Troy’ picks up almost immediately after ‘The Silence of the Girls’, and perhaps it wasn’t as wise to read it immediately after. Both books aren’t easy and deal with several traumatic and hard topics.

I love Greek myths retellings, and I think it’s important to see more stories from women perspective, but I think I have enjoyed book 1 a little bit more. I have especially had issues with the fat-shaming fragment of the book, which felt unnecessary, and it could have been shown differently.

In ‘The Women of Troy’ we still mainly see the events through the eyes of Briseis, pregnant with Achilles’ child, and married to Alcimus. In some ways, her situation improved, in others it remains hopeless. I would be interested to see what happens after as the book finishes when the fighters leave the lands of Troy to travel home.

Excellent. Well-researched, good plotting, and believable characterisation. Very enjoyable for history lovers, but more general readers will find much to enjoy in this classic (in all senses) story.

The walls of Troy have fallen and the renegade Helen is returned to her husband but all is not well. The Gods are offended and a howling gale means the Greeks cannot return home. The men are fighting each other and the women are slaves or prizes worth little. Briseis is pregnant with the child of Achilles but is married off to Alcimus, one of the Greek leaders, she must try to help the women of Troy as best she can, even though revenge is the order of the day.
The previous novel by Barker, The Silence of the Girls, was wonderful and this just carries on. Each women has her own story, her own destiny and her own way of surviving but together their narratives weave an alternative to the great end to the war. The trend for female re-imaginings of classical myths is showing no signs of abating but is also producing some amazing writing. This is a brilliant novelist at her best.

I loved Pat Barker's previous books and this one did not disappoint - a stunning portrait of the lives of these characters. Will be buying for everyone for christmas!

While I still enjoyed Barker's writing in this way, The Women of Troy just didn't hold up to the promise of its predecessor, There were a few things I didn't like about what this one focused on, but I think the main issue was that it felt as though there was very little plot driving the story and so it wasn't so much slow, but glacial. I will say that it afforded a chance to really build up the in-situ reality of life at this point, but that can only hold up for so long before it becomes stagnant.