A really beautiful book, a kaleidoscope of the stories of women involved in or touched by the Trojan War. Goddesses and mortals, nymphs and muses, queens and war prizes, those caught up in the thick of things and those waiting for the heroes to come home. The ones who are at the center of every retelling and the ones who often don't make it into the abridged versions.

There are a lot of POVs here, slowly forming a single narrative, subtly pointing out how all these lives and fates intersect, influencing each other. How all these women are shaped by war, and by men, and by gods being gods, and by people being people—and how they also affect all of those. Even if it isn't immediately visible. Even if they are too easy to overlook.

My favorite POVs were probably Calliope, as she sings the story to Homer, deliberately twisting the story to draw his attention to those poets don't often see; Penelope, as she grows increasingly frustrated in her wait for Odysseus; and I can't say I liked all those parts with the gods orchestrating the war, because gods at their worst are incredibly hard to like, but I did find them incredibly fascinating.

The prose here is beautiful, the narrative is complex, and the attention to detail breathtaking. I'd like to re-read this book later, at least once—I have a feeling it's the kind of novel where you discover something new each time you crack it open.