Black Ships.

Graham, Jo (author).

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In Graham’s exceptional retelling of the Aeneid, the narrator is Gull, daughter of a Trojan captive and chosen when a child to be the voice of the Lady of the Dead, oracle and counselor to kings, in the city of Pylos. When nine black ships manned by Trojan exiles appear at Pylos, Gull must choose between remaining with the oracle or joining the remnant of her mother’s people. She chooses to sail, and from the city of pirates to the temples of Byblos, from the cities of the Black Land (Egypt) to the caverns beneath Vesuvius, Gull guides Prince Aeneas on his quest to find a land where his people can start anew. The history behind the Iliad has been disputed since the days of Homer. Graham places her version at the end of the Bronze Age, when some catastrophe (still disputed by archaeologists) destroyed all Mediterrean civilizations save Egypt’s and ushered in a dark age. A plausible premise, superb characters, a plot that originally extrapolates from classical literature, history, and mythology—all make for a first-class, very readable first novel.