The Voyage Home

• Author: Pat Barker
• Genre: Historical Fiction
• Publication Date: August 15, 2024
• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Series: Women of Troy #3

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Books for providing me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The follow-up to Pat Barker’s Number One bestseller THE WOMEN OF TROY.

Continuing the story of the captured Trojan women as they set sail for Mycenae with the victorious Greeks, this new novel centres on the fate of Cassandra — daughter of King Priam, priestess of Apollo, and a prophet condemned never to be heeded. (When she refuses to have sex with Apollo, after he has kissed her, granting her the gift of true prophecy, he spits in her mouth to make sure she will never be believed.)

Psychologically complex and dangerously driven, Cassandra’s arrival in Mycenae will set in motion a bloody train of events, drawing in King Agamemnon, his wife Clytemnestra and daughter Electra. Agamemnon’s triumphant return from Troy is far from the celebration he imagined, and the fate of the Trojan women as uncertain as they had feared.

I came across this series just before the first book came out, and was so impressed by Barker’s writing. After doing a quick reread of the first two books, I was ready to start this one, and it far exceeded any expectations that I had for this trilogy ender. 

To start with, the first two books in the series tell the story of the fall of Troy, but through the eyes of the women sidelined in the story, primarily Briseis, a former Trojan queen who was given to Achilles as a slave. I love how Barker gives voice to the women who are basically overlooked in The Iliad, which tells the story only through the voice of men. This final book doesn’t feature Briseis, but carries on the story of the voiceless females on their journey back ‘home.’ For the women, they’re heading farther from what they called home, but don’t have much control over the events in their lives now that they are slaves.

This book centers on the experiences of Ritsa, a healer who worked with Briseis and is now assigned to be Cassandra’s slave; along with Clytemnestra, Agamemnon’s wife. There are a lot of conflicts that go on in the wives of these women, and it kept things interesting. I went into this knowing the basics of the story—Cassandra being given the gift of accurate prophesy, but cursed to have her predictions ignored; Cassandra being taken home to Mycenae with Agamemnon, and the brutal showdown between Agamemnon and his furious wife, Clytemnestra, which has been brewing for years. But Barker added complexity and depth to the bare bones of the story, and really giving the women an actual voice of their own for the first time.

The relationships between the women in this story are what really made this series so intriguing. While the original Greek myths surrounding the Trojan War only focused on the warriors, they don’t say much about the women and definitely don’t explore how their motivations and life experiences that led them there impact their lives and interactions with others.

By the time we really get to know Cassandra, a daughter of Priam and a virgin priestess in the temple of Apollo, her station in life has dramatically changed and she’s often discussed as a woman suffering from madness. As someone trained in mental health, I couldn’t help but wonder if her madness came less from the ability to have others believe in her prophecies, but more from the traumatic events of the sack of Troy, culminating in her brutal rape in the Temple of Apollo, and even the shift in her circumstances: watching her brother and family members die, witnessing the brutal murder of children, and going from a princess to a slave. Ironically, we never really find out what Cassandra is actually thinking, and her personality is shared through the eyes of Ritsa and Clytemnestra. 

Clytemnestra was another complicated character in the story. She has been incubating her fury for a decade, since her husband Agamemnon sacrificed their daughter to the gods in an effort to obtain a good wind to sail to Troy. I have seen firsthand the terrible grief that occurs with the death of a child, and I can’t even imagine how much worse it must feel knowing that your husband was the cause, and viewed her death as a means to an end, the sack of Troy. On top of that, she’s dealing with her husband coming back home for the first time and flaunting his new slave, and then realizing that Cassandra isn’t just a slave, but also his new wife. This places Cassandra and consequently Ritsa in a perilous position in Mycenaean society, directly at odds with Clytemnestra. As always, Agamemnon made it worse by telling her to be nice to Cassandra. Putting myself into Clytemnestra’s shoes was easy in this story, since it’s all about the experiences and thoughts of the women involved.

There has been a resurgence in mythology retelling in the last few years, and this series is a gold standard for me to measure other retellings against, much like Circe by Madeline Miller became. I was a little concerned about this story, and how it seemed to be taking a sharp turn by shifting the narrators from the one in the first two books and incorporating two in this story. I definitely missed Briseis, but loved seeing Ritsa get a larger role in this book, as well as getting a different perspective on the events that changed the lives of all of the women involved—including Clytemnestra’s remaining daughter, Electra. My only complaint is that the narrator changes between chapters aren’t labeled and were a bit confusing at first, until I got to know the voices of Ritsa and Clytemnestra. 

Overall, this is a fantastic story, and I really loved how Barker breathed life (and estrogen) into tired old Greek myths that desperately needed it. I can’t exactly say that I ‘enjoyed’ this book or series, because it focuses on enslaved women and the experiences that they face, but it was written beautifully and sensitively. The women face the murder of their husbands, children, and family members, only to be taken as slaves and given to the heroes of the battle as a reward. Grief, enslavement, rape, and abuse are topics that arise over the course of this book and the series, but Barker takes appropriate care with all of the topics, and attributes resilience to these women. When one character takes control of her own destiny with both hands, it creates a chain reaction of events that ultimately fulfill Cassandra’s predictions. I can’t recommend this book and the series overall enough, and they’re criminally underhyped. This would be a great read for you if you like reading Greek mythology retellings, female centered stories, books about strong women in tough situations, or simply want a different viewpoint on male-centered myths.

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