Book Review: A Sea of Sorrow by David Blixt, Amalia Carosella, Libbie Hawker, Scott Oden, Vicky Alvear Shecter, and Russell Whitfield

A Sea of Sorrow by David Blixt, Amalia Carosella, Libbie Hawker, Scott Oden, Vicky Alvear Shecter, and Russell Whitfield
ARC, e-Book, 524 pages
Knight Media, LLC
October 17, 2017
★★★★☆

Genre: Historical Fiction, Short Story

Source: Received for review with Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours

Odysseus, infamous trickster of Troy, vaunted hero of the Greeks, left behind a wake of chaos and despair during his decade long journey home to Ithaca. Lovers and enemies, witches and monsters—no one who tangled with Odysseus emerged unscathed. Some prayed for his return, others, for his destruction. These are their stories…

A beleaguered queen’s gambit for maintaining power unravels as a son plots vengeance.

A tormented siren battles a goddess’s curse and the forces of nature to survive.

An exiled sorceress defies a lustful captain and his greedy crew.

A blinded shepherd swears revenge on the pirate-king who mutilated him.

A beautiful empress binds a shipwrecked sailor to servitude, only to wonder who is serving whom.

A young suitor dreams of love while a returned king conceives a savage retribution.

Six authors bring to life the epic tale of The Odyssey seen through the eyes of its shattered victims—the monsters, witches, lovers, and warriors whose lives were upended by the antics of the “man of many faces.” You may never look upon this timeless epic—and its iconic ancient hero—in quite the same way again.

Having thoroughly enjoyed A Song of War, the prior release from the H Team, I was super excited to see that they were taking on the epic story of The Odyssey. Growing up I had always inhaled the tale of Odysseus and his adventures returning home to his waiting family after ten years of war. I first want to address my thoughts on the individual stories before getting into my overall thoughts.

---

Song of Sorrow by Vicky Alvear Shecter

It makes complete sense that the collection begins with the story of Penelope and Telemachus and how they deal with the suitors for her hand. Without this story you do not have the emotional reunion when Odysseus does eventually come home. Unfortunately for me, this was always the most boring part of the tale, and not a favorite story here either. Shecter did a great job of giving Penelope and Telemachus depth of character, which did make me care about their evolution at the end. The problem here is that nothing happens in this story and as it is the first in the collection, not grabbing my attention is really an issue.

---

Xenia in the Court of the Winds by Scott Oden

Wow, can I just say that I missed a lot in this story – namely that Xenia is not a character, which is what I thought the narrators name was for quite some time (for the record, his name is Glaukos and xenia is like the right of offering fellowship to a visitor). So that might have made a tiny bit of difference in my appreciation of this story. I appreciated that Polyphemus comes to this land to tell the story of what Odysseus and his men did, but I wasn’t a fan of the way the tale was told. Glaukos is telling the tale to his grandchild of when he was a little boy and Polyphemus came to his land, in that tale Polyphemus tells the story to Glaukos and the villagers of when Odysseus came to his land. I felt so far removed from these characters because of the way the story was told that I didn’t make any connections to them to care how they were affected. I waited and waited for something to happen, only for it to happen in the last few moments of the story before it ended. It didn’t feel like enough of a payoff to have waited that long for. I loved that Polyphemus has a backstory of being from Egypt and how Oden built the myth of the Kyklops.

---

Hekate’s Daughter by Libbie Hawker

This story (and the next 3) were where my enjoyment was really situated. Hawker fantastically built a believable story of how a woman could have been believed to be a witch based on circumstances way beyond her control. Circe didn’t want to be married to the man she was wed to by her father. When that inevitably fails and she is sent away to an exile, she finds who she truly is. Once Odysseus and his men showed up on the island I felt like the pacing slowed down and I again lost some interest in the story…until he set sail again.

---

The Siren’s Song by Amalia Carosella

Easily my FAVORITE story in the collection! What is funny to me is that this is the part of the tale, of those included in this collection, that Odysseus has the least interaction with – actually never directly engaging with the Sirens. This gave Carosella so much latitude to work with, but also really required her to build these shell characters into someone the reader could care about, as if they had read the Odyssey they wouldn’t have already had indepth knowledge of them. This was also the first story that I felt had forward momentum the whole way through with events transpiring throughout. I felt that life or death struggle these women were facing and really cared about their outcome. Excellent contribution to the collection.

---

Calypso’s Vow by David Blixt

Odysseus easily spends the most time with Calypso of all the people who he encounters in his travels home. I think this story should have had the longest page count because there is so much to tell here. Odysseus really finds himself here. He changes throughout each of his encounters with the people on his journey, but this one really gets him to a place where he feels like he is finally the man to return home to Penelope. I liked that Calypso has a heart and doesn’t want Odysseus to leave, but knows she is not the woman for him and that eventually he must return home. Watching the evolution of the two characters throughout this story was breathtaking.

---

The King in Waiting by Russell Whitfield

This is where the real action happens and where we get to see Odysseus return home to deal with everything that has happened in his absence. Whitfield has to pull together this Odysseus who has been handled in some way or another by 5 other authors before him and make him one man. He has to bring to the reader than man that you can finally get behind, because Odysseus is really not all that likable when seen through the eyes of the people he has hurt, even here too. While David Blixt began the redemption of Odysseus in the previous story, Whitfield brings it full circle. The scene where the suitors were dealt with was very satisfying, and gruesome.

---

Epilogue by Vicky Alvear Shecter

Shecter brings us full circle at the end with Penelope trying to understand and take in all that has happened, how Odysseus has changed, and how does she accept a man who has been gone for almost 20 years. It was a very satisfying and sweet closure to the collection.

---

Overall

I did have some struggles with this collection, which were definitely from personal experience with the source material. When you read The Odyssey, it is obviously a heroic tale of a great man, so to see him in a negative light from the majority of the character narrators here is jarring and difficult to acclimate to. I think that these authors did a fantastic job of seeing the story from the other perspective and getting past that veil of heroism. Odysseus and his men either directly or indirectly caused harm to so many people on their journey home. Having come off of previously reading A Song of War, and a FANTASTIC Odysseus crafted by Shecter in that collection, I was primed to see him as this great man. I also was so looking forward to seeing Shecter’s Odysseus again, although Whitfield did do an excellent job with him as well. Unlike in the other collections where many of the characters often have direct interactions with each other, for most of the narrators the only connection is Odysseus. This is why I was very exited to see the Circe and Sirens stories intertwined; I think this was a fabulous choice and an excellent way to flesh out the story of the Sirens as well. These authors were able to take characters who are traditionally imbued with magic or some otherworldly element and make them into real human beings with flaws or other characteristcs that might lead them to be mislabeled. The magical elements are removed from the story, which could make some of the elements of these tales difficult to root in the real world, but they did it. Whether it was through falsehoods spun on purpose to create fear, not understanding someone who is different in culture, or just the way someone tells a tale to make themselves look better, everything made sense in a real world way. The first two tales were a little boring for me and failed to pull me in, but the collection as a whole was well done.

Reviews of this book by other bloggers:

• Flashlight Commentary
• What Cathy Read Next

Buy the Book: Amazon | Barnes & Noble

Also by The H Team:

The H Team is a loose collection of historical fiction authors that unite to write short story collections. Some of the authors previously collaborated for the following books:

A Day of Fire: A Novel of Pompeii
By Stephanie Dray, Ben Kane, E. Knight, Sophie Perinot, Kate Quinn, and Vicky Alvear Shecter
[My Review]

A Year of Ravens: A Novel of Boudica’s Rebellion
By Ruth Downie, Stephanie Dray, E. Knight, Kate Quinn, Vicky Alvear Shecter, S.J.A. Turney, and Russell Whitfield
[My Review]

A Song of War by Kate Quinn, Christian Cameron, Libbie Hawker, Vicky Alvear Shecter, Russell Whitfield, Stephanie Thornton, and S.J.A Turney
[My Review]

Find The H Team: Facebook

Tour Wide Giveaway!

As part of the tour, a paperback copy of A Sea of Sorrow is up for grabs.  Please enter via the Gleam form below.  Please note, if you have questions to contact the HFVBT coordinator as I am not involved with this giveaway.

• Giveaway ends at 11:59pm EST on November 17th. You must be 18 or older to enter.
• Giveaway is open to US & Canada residents only.
• Only one entry per household.
• All giveaway entrants agree to be honest and not cheat the systems; any suspect of fraud is decided upon by blog/site owner and the sponsor, and entrants may be disqualified at our discretion.
• Winner has 48 hours to claim prize or new winner is chosen.

A Sea of Sorrow

Follow the Tour!

On the HFVBT Webpage or on Twitter: #ASeaofSorrowBlogTour

Tuesday, October 17
Review at A Book Drunkard

Wednesday, October 18
Feature at A Holland Reads

Thursday, October 19
Feature at View From the Birdhouse

Friday, October 20
Review at Pursuing Stacie

Monday, October 23
Review at The Maiden’s Court

Tuesday, October 24
Feature at The Reading Queen

Wednesday, October 25
Review at A Bookish Affair

Thursday, October 26
Review at What Cathy Read Next

Friday, October 27
Feature at So Many Books, So Little Time

Monday, October 30
Review at Creating Herstory

Tuesday, October 31
Review at Historical Fiction Reviews

Wednesday, November 1
Review at Back Porchervations

Thursday, November 2
Feature at The Writing Desk

Friday, November 3
Review at 100 Pages a Day

Monday, November 6
Review at Broken Teepee

Tuesday, November 7
Feature at A Literary Vacation

Wednesday, November 8
Feature at Passages to the Past

Friday, November 10
Review at Locks, Hooks and Books

Monday, November 13
Review at Unabridged Chick
Feature at CelticLady’s Reviews

Tuesday, November 14
Review at Bookramblings
Feature at Myths, Legends, Books & Coffee Pots

Thursday, November 16
Feature at I Heart Reading

Friday, November 17
Review at A Book Geek
Review at The True Book Addict

Copyright © 2017 by The Maiden’s Court

Book Review: A Song of War by Kate Quinn, Christian Cameron, Libbie Hawker, Vicky Alvear Shecter, Russell Whitfield, Stephanie Thornton, and S.J.A. Turney

A Song of War: A Novel of Troy
by Kate Quinn, Christian Cameron, Libbie Hawker, Vicky Alvear Shecter, Russell Whitfield, Stephanie Thornton, and S.J.A. Turney
ARC, e-book & paperback, 428 pages
Knight Media, LLC
October 18, 2016
★★★★ ½☆

Genre: Historical Fiction, Short Stories

Source: Received for review with HF Virtual Book Tours

Troy: city of gold, gatekeeper of the east, haven of the god-born and the lucky, a city destined to last a thousand years. But the Fates have other plans—the Fates, and a woman named Helen. In the shadow of Troy's gates, all must be reborn in the greatest war of the ancient world: slaves and queens, heroes and cowards, seers and kings . . . and these are their stories.

A young princess and an embittered prince join forces to prevent a fatal elopement.

A tormented seeress challenges the gods themselves to save her city from the impending disaster.

A tragedy-haunted king battles private demons and envious rivals as the siege grinds on.

A captured slave girl seizes the reins of her future as two mighty heroes meet in an epic duel.

Grizzled archer and a desperate Amazon risk their lives to avenge their dead.

A trickster conceives the greatest trick of all.
A goddess' son battles to save the spirit of Troy even as the walls are breached in fire and blood.

Seven authors bring to life the epic tale of the Trojan War: its heroes, its villains, its survivors, its dead. Who will lie forgotten in the embers, and who will rise to shape the bloody dawn of a new age?

When I heard that the H Team was going to be coming out with a collection about the Trojan War as best known from The Illiad, I was ecstatic. The first two collections that they released, A Day of Fire and A Year of Ravens, were top reads for me in their respective years – so I knew this one would be good. Secondly, while I haven’t read The Illiad, I LOVE The Odyssey and looked forward to reading more related to this storyline. And finally, I loved seeing that Stephanie Thornton was taking part this time as I have enjoyed all of her novels set in the ancient world.

First I want to talk a little about each story before discussing the collection as a whole.

---

The Apple by Kate Quinn

Kate Quinn had potentially one of the most difficult sections of this greater story arc; not only does her story set the scene and tone for the rest of the book, but there also isn’t a lot of action here as the whole thing is just beginning. For the most part, I think she did an admirable job. We meet the majority of the characters that will be fleshed out later in the book, particularly the significant sons of Priam, King of Troy. I quickly disliked Paris and found Hector to be among my favorite characters throughout. There was a complete story arc present here and there was a pretty great confrontation scene toward the end. I appreciated the dual narrators of Andromache and Hellenus because they gave us both the male and female insight into the wedding activities of Odysseus and Penelope and all of the behind the scenes drama that ensued. This story also takes place in the Achaean lands and we are introduced to the life in Sparta, which contrasts starkly with the life in Troy.

---

The Prophecy by Stephanie Thornton

Stephanie Thornton brings us into the world of Troy, however from a somewhat limited perspective of Cassandra. Seeing as she has visions of the future, you might wonder why I say she is limited – this is due to the fact that no one listens to her and she leads a very lonely existence within the palace at Troy. Cassandra is often viewed as a mad-woman, but her presentation here really makes you question whether she is mad or the world around her is. Cassandra is dark and tormented and such a different character than the majority that we will see in this book. This chapter, even more than the first, made me really dislike Helen; she is not some woman who just sits around and lets things happen to her, she causes havoc on her own.

---

The Sacrifice by Russell Whitfield

Russell Whitfield bounces the reader back to the Achaean camp and presents us with an Agamemnon that I felt a little sorry for. As we are seeing his life and this war through his own eyes it helps to humanize him a little bit as he makes sense of what he is doing. One of the things that helped me like him a little bit was how he was presented against Achilles. The two of them are very different people, present themselves in different ways, and approach war from entirely opposing perspectives. Whitfield makes us feel with Agamemnon for all the stress of being the high king in a war full of heroes. While I didn’t like him, I understood him better.

---

The Duel by Christian Cameron

This was a section of the story that made me quite sad as it is the duel between Achilles and Hector. This is so full of passion and action. I disliked Achilles, he is so full of pride, but he has been hurt to the core during this war too. On the other hand, I loved Hector; he was even-keeled, disliked Helen and Paris for bringing all this destruction with them, but is a powerful warrior. The battle between these two iconic men of their respective sides was a scene I couldn’t tear my eyes from. Despite this being a vastly masculine story element, it is seen from the eyes of a female perspective of Briseis – someone who was once a Trojan but has come to love Achilles, which gives her an interesting perspective. A powerful, powerful story.

---

The Bow by Libbie Hawker

This is another scene told from a dual perspective spanning the two camps: Penthesilea of the Amazons and Philoctetes. Philoctetes was another one of the characters that I loved in this novel, while Penthesilea was one that I wasn’t a huge fan of. With Penthesilea I didn’t feel like I really knew much about her at all. She wasn’t a character that I had been introduced to previously in this book and she just shows up full of grief. I think I would have liked to have known more about what her life was like prior to arriving at Troy; we see glimpses of it, but I felt a little cheated in getting to know her, unlike the other characters. I didn’t care about the choices she made or what would happen to her, but her battle with Achilles was powerful and a game changer for his character. Speaking of Achilles, Philoctetes influenced him in a different way and vice versa. He was a friend and fellow hero, and he loved Achilles even when it didn’t appear to have been reciprocated. He was extremely refreshing, especially contrasting with Penthesilea who I did not enjoy as much.

---

The Horse by Vicky Alvear Shecter

I can’t even begin to describe how much I loved the character of Odysseus as written here by Vicky Alvear Shecter! He showed up in several of the chapters in just small doses and I enjoyed each of those moments for the wit of his character and his wiles in the face of the other heroes who were all about direct battle. In his own chapter I was treated to even more of the fun of this man. His manner of speech was oftentimes hilarious and I loved his interactions with Diomedes. Based on her writing of this character I would LOVE to see her take on an interpretation of The Odyssey as I think I would really enjoy her presentation of him taking on all of his epic struggles to get home. In this story, Odysseus brings us closer to the ultimate fall of Troy, and while I found myself identifying with the Trojans more, I couldn’t help but cheer every time Odysseus succeeded where many expected him to fail. Best story of the collection in my opinion, hands down.

---

The Fall by S.J.A. Turney

As with the opener, Turney has one of the difficult sections in that everything needs to be tied together, and I think that was accomplished here. Aeneas is one of the last of the Trojans and he has been in and out of chapters since the first one so I was happy to have a face closing it out that I knew and actually liked. I think it had to be a truly likable character here because you needed to feel the pain of the fall of Troy. Aeneas exemplifies that not only in what he loses but also because he tries so hard to keep the inevitable from happening, even when he knows it will happen anyway. It leaves the reader with some hope, a slight positive note in a serious chapter. Many of the characters we have gotten to know throughout the novel (those still alive anyway) make some recurrences here and everything felt in place.

---

Overall

Most of these stories worked well and I loved seeing some fan favorites but also some characters that were new to me as well; it helped keep a very old story new and fresh. I had always identified with the Greeks in retellings of this story, but here I found myself favoring the Trojans – it’s amazing what a gifted writer can do with your emotions! I loved digging into some of the deeper history around this time too, much more than you get from Homer and I thought that leaning Troy more toward the way of the Near East was more realistic than toward the Greeks and it helped to create a little line of friction between the two sides. As I stated before, Odysseus in the hands of Shecter blew me away and I find it hard to believe that she struggled to write him as he appears flawless.

Reviews of this book by other bloggers:

• Unabridged Chick
• Flashlight Commentary

Buy the Book: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | RJ Julia

Also by the H Team:

The H Team is a loose collection of historical fiction authors that unite to write short story collections. Some of the authors previously collaborated for the following books:

A Day of Fire: A Novel of Pompeii
By Stephanie Dray, Ben Kane, E. Knight, Sophie Perinot, Kate Quinn, and Vicky Alvear Shecter
[My Review]

A Year of Ravens: A Novel of Boudica’s Rebellion
By Ruth Downie, Stephanie Dray, E. Knight, Kate Quinn, Vicky Alvear Shecter, S.J.A. Turney, and Russell Whitfield
[My Review]

Find The H Team: Facebook

Follow the Tour!

HFVBT Website
On Twitter: # ASongofWarBlogTour #HTeam

Tour Wide Giveaway!

To win a paperback copy of A Song of War: A Novel of Troy by the H Team, please enter via the Gleam form below.  Please note, if you have questions to contact the HFVBT coordinator as I am not involved with this giveaway.

Rules

• Giveaway ends at 11:59pm EST on November 12th. You must be 18 or older to enter.
• Giveaway is open to US & Canada residents only.
• Only one entry per household.
• All giveaway entrants agree to be honest and not cheat the systems; any suspect of fraud is decided upon by blog/site owner and the sponsor, and entrants may be disqualified at our discretion.
• Winner has 48 hours to claim prize or new winner is chosen.

Good luck!

A Song of War

Copyright © 2016 by The Maiden’s Court

Book Review: Mercer Girls by Libbie Hawker

Mercer Girls by Libbie Hawker

ARC, e-book, 432 pages

Lake Union Publishing

May 10, 2016

★★★☆☆

Genre: Historical Fiction

Source: Reviewed for review via Netgalley

It’s 1864 in downtrodden Lowell, Massachusetts. The Civil War has taken its toll on the town—leaving the economy in ruin and its women in dire straits. That is, until Asa Mercer arrives on a peculiar, but providential, errand: he seeks high-minded women who can exert an elevating influence in Seattle, where there are ten men for every woman. Mail-order brides, yes, but of a certain caliber.

Schoolmarmish Josephine, tough-as-nails Dovey, and pious perfectionist Sophronia see their chance to exchange their bleak prospects for new lives. But the very troubles that sent them running from Lowell follow them to the muddy streets of Seattle, and the friendships forged on the cross-country trek are tested at every turn.

Just when the journey seems to lead only to ruin, an encounter with a famous suffragist could be their salvation. But to survive both an untamed new landscape and their pasts, they’ll need all their strength—and one another.

So Mercer Girls…I have a lot to say about this book and it’s a real mixed bag of feelings. This book came extraordinarily close to being a second DNF this year, but with this one after setting it aside for months I came back and finished reading through it. And I think that was absolutely necessary as it divided the book into virtually two books in my brain (which is what I felt needed to be done here anyway).

Let’s start with what I loved about the book…the cover! I don’t know that the cover really gives any relation at all to the story, mayyyybe she could have been a Mercer girl, who knows. But, this cover would have drawn me to it if I saw it sitting on a shelf regardless of what the story was about or what section it was in. While the majority of the image is in gray-scale, the aqua color pops in the areas where it appears and the red used for the title area added complementing colors. Beautiful cover and I’m not ashamed to say that it contributed to my desire to grab up the book in combination with the book description.

I liked the idea and the historical story behind Mercer Girls. I had never heard of Asa Mercer’s two expeditions to the east coast to round of young women looking to move west to Seattle to marry the men who had went west to build the city. This was the portion of the novel that I did enjoy. The tribulations that Mercer faces in trying to gather more than a few women, even from towns and cities that were facing hardships as a result of the Civil War, were striking. You would have thought that more wanted to travel for opportunity, but not quite the case. Mercer wasn’t trusted, people were afraid that these women would end up as prostitutes instead of wives. But our three heroines (Jo, Sophronia, and Dovey) agree to go with Mercer each for their own reasons – pasts that they are trying to escape. The women’s experience getting to the west was harrowing, the trip by sea was dangerous and quite literally gut-wrenching. I appreciated the bonding of these women over their shared experiences and how they helped each other to survive. Upon arriving in Seattle it was an entirely different experience than what the women expected to find – they were not welcomed and the world was a more spare existence than they anticipated. It was about this time that I felt the novel should have wound to an end, but unfortunately this was only about the halfway point, and where I had set down the novel for a while.

The second portion of the novel was about their new life in Seattle, which I didn’t find nearly half as interesting and felt like a separate story from the earliest part. The women sort of went their separate ways and the story became mired down in the fight for women’s suffrage, which felt heavy and a little bit preachy. Ultimately, the story wound up fairly well, but I struggled to get through this second portion. I did not really like any of the women, especially when they had their own storylines. Together, they were a united front and they interacted well with each other, but on their own they were just uninteresting. Sophronia (what kind of name is that?) was exceptionally preachy, uptight, and small-minded. Jo had the most interesting of a backstory (and that’s not saying too much), but as a person she was boring. Dovey she was just too much of everything: a wreck and a daredevil. They each were more of a stereotype than an actual woman. I did not feel like their decisions were well thought out and they were all over the place.

If this story had ended before the women’s suffrage storyline, this probably would have been a 4 star for me as I enjoyed that plotline. However, the second half of the story was a real drag for me and brought it lower in my opinion of the book as a whole.

Reviews of this book by other bloggers:

• Dear Author
• Going Through Books
• Silent Seasons

Buy the Book: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | RJ Julia


Also by Libbie Hawker:

Daughter of Sand and Stone

Tidewater

 
Find Libbie Hawker: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

 



Copyright © 2016 by The Maiden’s Court