This is the final part of Pat Barker's second war trilogy after her brilliant WWII books in the 1990s. In this series she focuses on giving a voice to the women who suffered during and immediately after the ten years of the Trojan War. The first two books were largely narrated by Briseis, the 19-year-old widow of the king of the Trojan city of Lyrnessus, destroyed by the Greeks. Briseis is now married to Achilles' right-hand man and has gone home with him, so this final instalment takes up the story of Cassandra and is told by her maid Ritsa.

Cassandra is the daughter of King Priam, given as war spoils to the Greek leader Agamemnon who has allegedly married her in spite of having another wife waiting for him. A former priestess of Apollo, Cassandra has been cursed by the god - given the gift of prophesy but doomed by him never to be believed. As they embark on the the journey back to his kingdom in Mycenae she steadfastly maintains that she is imminently to die, alongside Agamemnon. As the ship nears land, Cassandra and Ritsa's story is counterpointed by the preparations of Clytemnestra, Agamemnon's wife, for his long-awaited return. Long-awaited but not for obvious reasons...

The first half of the book is set on the rickety ship they are sailing on, the second half on Mycenae in the first few days following the warriors' return. Ritsa is an astute and observant narrator, and for a slave she manages to get around a surprising amount. But like the second book in this series, ultimately not very much happens. Of the two halves, the second is the more atmospheric, with the portended doom for Cassandra and Agamemnon compounded by the ghosts of children who have been wronged and murdered in the palace, who chant ominous nursery rhymes in whispers everyone hears but nobody acknowledges.

The challenge with stories that have been well known for over a millennium is to give a fresh voice, an alternate viewpoint, to make them come alive for the reader. The first instalment did this admirably but it feels like there isn't quite enough in the story to stretch to two more books. I think Pat Barker's treatment of the Clytemnestra / Cassandra storyline also suffers in comparison with Claire North's House of Odysseus trilogy, which is wickedly sharp and fresh in a way that The Voyage Home and its predecessor, sadly, are not.

This is the final book in the trilogy which started with ‘The Trojan Women’, retelling the story of the wars between Greece and Troy and their aftermath from the point of view of the women involved. This book deals with the return of Agamemnon to Greece with his new trophy wife, Cassandra the soothsayer, and her servant cum slave, Ritsa. It is not an easy homecoming since on the way he sacrificed his own daughter for a fair passage and he has a wife at home, Clytemnestra, who despises him and wants him dead.

There’s a sense in which this is a wrapping up of the story and for a reader it would make sense to start at the beginning. However, Ritsa keeps the story rolling, while Cassandra wrestles with her capacity to foretell a future which no one believes, and Clytemnestra plots during a windy voyage home.

As in the other stories, the warriors are hopelessly damaged by conflict and the deeds they have done. This is especially true of Agamemnon and his character, its conflicts and contradictions are well explored by Pat Barker.

She writes extremely well. The story rolls along, occasionally in somewhat visceral ways but, given the content that is hardly surprising. She also manages a surprise at the end and a degree of uncertainty about what is to happen next in Greece.

A gloomy and atmospheric retelling centred at the end of the Trojan War; intertwining the lives of Cassandra and her Trojan slave and Queen Clytemnestra.

The cursed palace felt as real as the immortalised characters that inhabited its halls. There was a tension that ran throughout the story, a backdrop for a study in the struggles for agency within their circumstances these women all grappled with.

At times the pace slowed but never was anything rushed or felt half baked; everything was written with purpose and intention.

Thank you to Penguin Books and NetGalley for this eArc.

The Voyage Home is the third book in a series about women in the time of the Trojan War by Pat Barker. I thoroughly enjoyed the first book and while I wasn’t as fond of the second, I still enjoyed reading it. I’ve been anticipating this book and generally enjoyed it (though the first book is still a clear favourite for me)

I remember when I read Women of Troy and thought that the way Cassandra was characterised was so interesting. Like she was playing at being mad and actually quite a great manipulator. I was excited to read from her perspective and found I liked the balance between the madness of her condition of prophecy, the accrue awareness of the people around her and the dark acceptance of her own fate contrasting against the deep hope of survival. I thought Cassandra using her ‘daddy’s girl’ voice on Agamemnon was an interesting touch and demonstrated her ability to work the people (especially men) around her. It was nicely contrasted with Ritsa’s observations of her. With all this being said, I think I would have liked more. Of Cassandra’s thoughts and feelings in particular.

There have been an influx of Clytemnestra retellings in recent years, but I always get excited when I see her name. And she was magnificent, a clever, terrifying force with (incredibly justified) rage. I found myself enjoying her perspective the most.

There were times that the immersion broke for me and I felt the story lacked authenticity, like the use of words like ‘skedaddled’. Additionally, it had more references to urine than I thought was necessary. While I loved the change in protagonist (with a multi point of view mode of story telling) there was no label indicating who was speaking, sometimes I needed to read and reread a page and a half to figure out who the protagonist was. This book is dark, given the historical backdrop against the Trojan War and its aftermath. The treatment and experiences of women has been a main feature of these books and The Voyage Home is no different. Sexual violence occurs frequently and I encourage audiences to be aware of this going in.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher, Penguin for giving me the opportunity to read this book in exchange for an honest review. These thoughts are all my own.

The Voyage Home is a masterclass in Greek mythology retellings – showcasing Pat Barker’s extraordinary characterisation and prose.

Barker brings us the final instalment in her The Women of Troy trilogy, focusing on the enslaved Ritsa (body woman to Cassandra), Cassandra and Clytemnestra. This has always centred on the stories of women confined to the margins whose stories have gone untold, like Ritsa, as well as new spins on some of the most famous moments of the Trojan War saga. Narratively, I really enjoyed the choice to give Ritsa first person narration and her more privileged fellow protagonists third person narratives, redressing that power balance a little. For me, Clytemnestra’s confrontation of Agamemnon is a part of the story that has always stuck with me. It is a tragic and heartfelt moment that also speaks to revenge and long-held anger. Barker muses on fate and the continual way women are used as pawns within this conflict, even away from the battlefield.

Clytemnestra is returning the violence inflicted upon Iphigenia and it is a cathartic unleash upon a monstrous man, but it also continues this never-ending cycle of death and destruction. It is a damning indictment of patriarchal power and its ripple effects through the generations. I have always also been fascinated with the figure of Cassandra, cursed to foresee the future but never to be believed. When this is combined with the rape culture underpinning her story, it rings uncomfortably true to the modern day. Barker’s characterisation of Cassandra is interesting and a subtle take that showcases a different side to her. I just always love how complex her characterisation is – it is layered and messy and deeply human.

The Voyage Home is exquisite – it is tragic, it is bold and it is unforgettable.

The Voyage Home continues Pat Barker's stories of the women of Troy, as Cassandra and Ritsa return alongside Agememnon to Mycenae where he must face the consequences of his actions at the star of the war.

There's always going to be issues when retelling Cassandra's story, as it's hard to build up suspense for an inevitable event that even the characters know is going to happen. However I think Pat Barker does a good job of making the reader still wonder if Cassandra's prophecy will eventually come to pass. However, I still think this sufferers with the same issues I had with the previous installments in that the multi povs often feel like one voice. I was often confused if the chapters were from Ritsa, Cassandra and even Clytemnestra (even though her chapters are not first person). This led to me being frequently thrown out of the story, and this slow build up that Barker was creating leading up to out 'main event' was often lost. The women also didn't feel distinct enough, with their development feeling a little thin on the ground because the story was stretched between the three. If we'd just had Ritsa or Cassandra I think this would have worked better. Especially when I compare this to recent novels that I've read and enjoyed that retell the same story and and have purposely centered one female voice.

I also didn't love that the writing often used colloquial language, again an issue I picked up in previous books in the series. It just felt a bit jarring. As did the slightly weird paranormal vibes the story was trying to give off. It didn't need it. The House of Atreus, with all its history, doesn't need ghost handprints to create a menacing atmosphere. It manages that all on its own by recounting the horrific events of its past. Especially when said ghost prints don't lead to anything plot wise.

However, even with all that, I do think overall this was a fast and compelling read that puts the women who fall in the shadow of powerful men back into the foreground.

https://lynns-books.com/2024/08/26/review-the-voyage-home-by-pat-barker-women-of-troy-3/
4.5 of 5 stars
My Five Word TL:DR Review: But Is this the conclusion?

I’ve loved reading Pat Barker’s imaginative retellings where the women of Troy are given a voice and opportunity to tell their story. Seriously, this series is amazing. I’m not sure if this is the final instalment, the title has the ring of a final book in series but if more books are forthcoming I’ll certainly be there for them. This particular story brings to us three women, two of them well known in terms of Greek mythology, Cassandra, daughter of Priam and Clytemnestra, wife of Agamemnon. In this retelling they are joined by a fictional character called Ritsa who serves as Cassandra’s body woman.

We begin the story with the voyage home where both women tread a fine line between pride and fear. Cassandra, once a priestess, a prophet that no one pays any regard to and now the trophy wife of Agamemnon almost longs for the voyage to end. She has foretold both her own and her husband’s death and whilst no one believes her she awaits her own end with no sense of dread, believing that for the prophecy to come true it must unfold in its entirety. Her slave Ritsa, formerly a healer is an easy to like and down to earth woman. She has known her own tragedy and it takes a while for her and Cassandra to strike a balance. Clytemnestra has also patiently awaited her husband’s return. She longs to avenge her daughter Iphigenia, sacrificed by her father to appease the Gods and gain a fair wind.

What I really enjoyed about this.

Once again the story is told in a very easy to access voice. I think perhaps this instalment felt a little more modern than the previous two books although I could be misremembering, but the places are always easy to imagine and the characters are really well drawn with the minimum fuss.

If you know the story then clearly the author is working within certain restraints and being a Greek tragedy there’s no escaping the inevitable What made this slightly different was giving us a fictional voice to allow glimpses into other aspects of the lives of these characters. Ritsa, being the slave of Cassandra is given some agency to come and go, her movements not always as closely observed as the other two women and therefore showing us the life that everyday folk lived. The herb gardens, the strange, rambling and disorientating palace, haunted by terrible deeds from the past, the claustrophobic ship that conveyed these women to Greece.

Agamemnon had no fear returning home, he resumed his role as King with swift ease, never once deferring to his wife, he assumed her subservience as his natural right and had no compunction about flaunting his young concubine. At the end of the day his arrogance led him blindly to his own downfall, it never occurred to him to have any fear of his wife, a woman eaten by the need for revenge.

The other thing that really hit me whilst reading was this secret longing for a different ending, this strange and unrealistic hope that maybe things will end differently for these women. It shows how the author draws you in and makes you form attachments, her storytelling is so good that you being to hope for something to change but at the same time you already know the outcome.

In conclusion this is an excellent series. I’ve enjoyed all these retellings. The writing is good, the author portrays the struggles and horror in such a way that there is no sensationalising of the brutality just a clear description of events that really bring home to you the cruelty and arrogance, the lack of feeling even, of some of these powerful men.

I received a copy through Netgalley, courtesy of the publisher, for which my thanks. The above is my own opinion.

What this gains in relateability, it loses in the mythic 3.5 rating

It’s with a bit of puzzlement and heavy heart that I find my rating so low. Barker had set her own bar impossibly high with the earlier parts of this trilogy. I can’t help but rate all writing about classical Greek myth and history to my first adult or young adult reading experience here – Mary Renault. Renault really brought home the weird, the mythic, the archetype and the long shadow of the past reaching into the present. Also, the sense that these were ‘real people’ and in some ways, their history might relate to ours, they might be like us, we might be like them though their world was different from ours. We shared psychologies, what it means to be human. And yet…..that world was utterly weird.

I felt all that, still, that combination of utterly strange and yet…the stories are still playing out, we are still unable to escape from these patterns of war, ancestral trauma, generational trauma, revenge, in the first book of this trilogy, The Silence of the Girls, a book of extraordinary power.

Here, Barker goes for taking us into relating to them, by having her central narrator, Ritsa, maid to Cassandra, speak in modern vernacular, particularly, using the rhymes and songs of a twentieth century child, which play in her head, and have sinister and resonant meaning to the horror of what has happened. Ritsa of course is also now, like other Trojan women, a slave. Making Ritsa very modern, very relateable, somehow moves this book away from that strangeness, and loses the ‘hairs up on the back of the neck’ weirdness, making this also more like fairy story.

Unfortunately the other comparison for me was a book I read fairly recently, though published a few years ago, covering the same territory, Natalie Haynes ‘A Thousand Ships’ Haynes, to my mind, had managed the balance of the impossibly weird, horrific and strange, with the ‘this is so like our STILL unfolding history’ – looking at current conflict zones, wonderfully, as well as incorporating a wry, mordant kind of humour in the character of Penelope, writing one of those never sent letters, a kind of journal, to her husband Odysseus.

Haynes book was too powerfully still present in my mind as I read this, so I couldn’t avoid making comparison.

This is just super. Immensely readable, wonderful interpretation of events at the end of the Trojan War. Clytemnestra and Cassandra are shown from their own viewpoints, and Ritsa ties the story together to bring you a complete overview of the events leading to Agamemnon's death. Absolutely enjoyable, a great addition to the previous two books in the series.

The Voyage Home is the 3rd book in Pat Barker’s Women of Troy series.
After the 10 year Trojan war King Agamemnon is returning home with Cassandra, his Trojan war bride (and daughter of Priam) who was endowed with the gift of prophecy but fated never to be believed.
The tale is narrated by her body slave Ritsa, and like the two previous books it’s told from the female perspective.
Ritsa has a straightforward way of narrating the coarsely raw experience of these women and Pat Barker cleverly uses modern dialogue, which makes the tale far more relatable for the reader.
Meanwhile, back home in Mycenae, Clytemnestra is waiting to avenge Agamemnon’s sacrifice of their daughter Iphigenia ten years before.
For me, of all the characters it was Clytemnestra who was brought most vividly to life in this book, along with the clammy oppressiveness of the palace, threat of looming disaster, the creeping air of menace and knowledge that the inevitable outcome couldn’t be avoided.
It is all so well portrayed there were times I was holding my breath and hoping for a different outcome.
These three books don’t hold back in depicting the brutal reality for Trojan women of every class, however towards the end of this book Cassandra muses “Men begin and end their lives as helpless lumps of flesh in the hands of women, and all the years between-power, success, wealth, fame, even victory in war-are merely a doomed attempt at escape.”

Highly recommended and hoping for a fourth book in due course!

Many thanks to NetGalley and Penguin General UK for an ARC

With thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.
#TheVoyageHome #NetGalley #PatBarker

Well the wrap up of this set of three novels as a trilogy is far from as poignant or involving as both the Regeneration and Life Class sets - in fact I have found it a somewhat jarring mix of voice and character focus to really accept them as a pure triad of linked stories. The Silence of the Girls, Women of Troy and now The Voyage Home are undoubtedly linked with a subset of themes and key story chronology, but have not powered through creating a lineage that tethers character, to story, to engagement, to emotion and so on.

A story with range, intrigue and powerful feminist voices - this retelling of Cassandra and Clytemnestra sings with defiance, quiet resolution and revolutionary essence of spirit. Following from The Women of Troy, the war is over and Troy is in ruins.
In winning, the Greeks fill their ships with treasures looted from victory, including the Trojan women. We meet among them the prophetess Cassandra, and her hear the story primarily through the voice of her maid Ritsa. Cassandra is enslaved as a chosen mistress for King Agamemnon, but is plagued by visions of his death, and we get echoes of Barker's knack for undertones of psychodramatic horror similar to the war haunted characters in Regeneration, as Ritsa witnesses the frenzy and trauma of Cassandra's reactions.
At the same time, Queen Clytemnestra, Agamemnon's wife, who is still heart-broken by his choice to sacrifice their eldest daughter to the gods in exchange for a fair wind to Troy when the war began. 10 years have left her with plenty of time to plot retribution for him. As his two women travel towards each other, they are soon united by the vision and need for Agamemnon's death.

That being said, I do think that, when taken as a stand alone novel in it's own right, The Voyage Home is an expertly crafted and sublimely written piece - as we undoubtedly expect from Barker. As ever the imagery and power of the language she uses to create place and people is deft, purposeful and carries meaning without over-substantiating sentences or sections of description beyond what is needed.
There is solid balance between narrative voice and the sometimes-shifting character perspective alongside the shaping of Greece and it's landscape, society and atmosphere post-war.
Though a little lengthy in places when telling the story and reaching the climax - there could have been a few chapters cut down - nothing felt irrelevant, and perhaps the intention was that the wait for the murderous climax was drawn out a little to retain some tension and ignite some frustration - especially with the planning being som much a part of how these female characters are empowered.

This is truly an enjoyable read, and so much within it's own premise and particulars, can be read alone even if the previous two novels have not been read.
Barker truly is one of the best creators of imagery and creating a sense of place which has meaning and thoughtfulness, allowing you to connect to it, wonder about it and empathise with it's inhabitants long after the final chapter is read.

The Voyage Home is the retelling of the mythological Greek story of Clytemnestra, Agamemnon and Cassandra. Troy has now fallen and the priestess and princess Cassandra is being carried home to Mycenae as Agamemnon's war bride. Clytemnestra is still furious about Agamemnon's sacrifice of her daughter Iphigenia and is plotting her revenge.

The story is told by Cassandra's maid, Ritsa, and she brings a wonderfully down-to-earth aspect to the tale. I liked the language used, it was very 21st century English, so the characters felt more relatable than they would if they were speaking in an archaic way.

A very fitting end to the trilogy (if it is an end?) Five stars from me.

***advance review copy received from NetGalley in return for an honest review***
A wonderful third installment in this trilogy, which continues to give a voice to the forgotten players of the Iliad - the women. What I particularly enjoy about these books is the down to earth language used, the way Barker shows us these are people just like we are. The temptation I think with mythology is to go high brow, poetic and beautiful language - it has its place, no doubt, but having your characters say things like “me dad’s place” firmly roots the reader with the understanding that this is a story about how these events affected the common people. We focus so often on the “big players”, the kings and queens - and they are present, too - but I really enjoy the way this shows the same events from a different perspective.

The third and final novel in Pat Barker's Women of Troy series, following Ritsa, Cassandra and Clytemnestra at the end of the war. A well-written and fitting conclusion to the trilogy, with a writing style that makes reading easy. However it lacked the propulsiveness of the earlier books and could have gone deeper into Clytemnestra and Cassandra's perspectives. A good read.

Thanks to Netgalley for this ARC.

Wow, there are a few authours that manage to get Greek retelling right, and Pat Batker is one of them. The third part of a triology this book packs jn so much information and story telling in such a short space it leaves you wanting more....picking this trilogy up on the last book I didn't realise this was the end ( I will go back and read the rest) I've have a lot of knowledge due to this being my favourite genre I just picked it up and was able to understand what was going on....

Nice short chapters that keep you engaged, and characters that will love in a heart beat a book filled of tragedy that you know isn't going to end well. A series that I will be recommending to others who want to start reading Greek mythological retelling.More of a four and half star review...

The Voyage Home is the final instalment in the trilogy that began with The Silence of the Girls and The Women of Troy. The Trojan War is over and Agamemnon is returning home with his concubine Cassandra and her maid Ritsa. Told mainly from the point of view of Ritsa, the reader learns that Cassandra has prophesied her death alongside Agamemnon’s when they return to his home. His Queen Clytemnestra has been ruling in his absence whilst also grieving the death of her daughter who was used as a sacrifice to the Gods in return for a wind for the war boats and she has been planning her revenge. I loved The Silence of the Girls and love Pat Barker’s writing but it didn’t feel that this part of the story justified a whole novel on its own. The main action in the novel feels inevitable and it then fizzles out. It is a hugely atmospheric novel however and Barker’s attention to detail and the lives of the women involved is, as always, superb.

Pat Barker has excelled herself with The Voyage Home. This is such a fitting conclusion to her trilogy of books about the Trojan women. Her characters come to life on the page and immerse the reader into history.
The book follows Ritsa, now enslaved into the service of Cassandra as she travels from her home in Troy to Greece. The Ancient Greece of Agamemnon is beautifully described, as is the cruelty and brutality of the king and the conquering Greeks. Ritsa and Cassandra, the doomed daughter of Priam, are so sympathetically portrayed. The ending of the book brings a feeling of redemption and relief.
This is a truly compelling conclusion to this trilogy and I would highly recommend it.

The third in Barker's retelling the story of Troy and the aftermath from the point of view of the women - enslaved, raped, forcibly married or, in the case of Clytemnestra, at home alone for 10 years ruling in the absence of her husband and all the while grieving and plotting vengeance on Agamemnon for the death of their daughter Iphigenia, sacrificed by him to aid the Greeks on their way to Troy.

Three women: Clytemnestra, Cassandra, daughter of Priam now enslaved and married to Agamemnon, and Ritsa her slave and personal maid, are the central focus of this novel. All of them are struggling for agency in the face of the aftermath of war and the ways in which women lose on all fronts. Barker conveys this excellently, as well as the toxic, bloody atmosphere of Agamemnon's court, haunted by other children brutally murdered by his father.

There are now a lot of retellings of Greek myths from a female point of view, but Barker is among the best, if not the best.

Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for a review copy.

Once more Pat Barker astounds us with her grasp of history through the eyes of those of myth and legend. Her writing is both timeless and sparse, with no pretension at imitating the vernacular of the past. We are there with her, exposed to the sights and smells of the time, the bloody wars and the aftermath. Agamemnon is returning home after ten years of the Trojan wars with Cassandra, former high priestess and his spoils of war. She has been given the gift of foretelling the future by the god Apollo, but is cursed as no one will believe her. The king’s wife has ruled in his name but harbours a festering rage after he sacrificed her beloved daughter in exchange for a fair wind to go to war. She seeks justice, as do many Trojan parents whose children were victims to his cruelty.
This is a gripping story, well told, from the perspective of the main female protagonists, for there is a third, a slave to Cassandra, who must witness much, and link us to love, life and death. She knows the cost of war, and lives left behind. I look forward to more of the same in the future.

This is the third instalment of Pat Barker's Women of Troy series, and I have to say, my favourite so far.
I had struggled with the previous two books, mainly because of the inclusion of male POVS in what is marketed as a feminist and woman focused retelling of the Trojan War, as well as the second book which was quite repetitive and stilted.
Comparatively, this book is a breath of fresh air. The focus is much tighter, we follow Ritsa (an enslaved woman, formerly a noble woman of Lyrnessus) as she and her mistress, the ill fated seer, Cassandra travel with Agamemnon back to Greece after emerging victorious from the Trojan War.
We also get Clytemnestra's perspective and see how she prepares to be reunited with her husband (and his new wife) after ten years of absence.
For me, Ritsa and Clytemnestra were much more likable than Briseis, I found the tighter focus on the one story much more enjoyable and overall this was a really interesting and pleasant read and an excellent instalment in this series. However it will also read well if you haven't read the previous two books, functioning well as a stand alone tale.