Trojan Tales: Voices from Afar
The story opens in first person with the elderly Andromache and her son journeying up a sun-drenched mountainside. She is not the young woman she once was; they sit, and she begins the tale of her past. From here on the story is third person, until the final chapter which reverts to first person again.
Andromache’s tale takes us back to her remarkable life in Troy as wife of Hector the warrior hero. Her past is that of meeting Helen of Sparta, Paris, and Cassandra – all familiar characters to readers of the Greek myths and stories. She is to relate the triumphs and disasters, and the final defeat of Troy with all the fateful destruction which followed.
Voices From Afar is a stirring tale that has some extremely rich and vivid descriptions of the famous Trojan Wars, and as many vivid characters brought to life by the author with conviction and a genuine passion, taking the reader through their shared joy and laughter, and the tears and tragedies of their lives.
This is a first novel, and is a good effort by a novice author. Some passages are slightly ‘tell’ not ‘show’, and occasionally the language becomes a little ‘flowery’ in places, while in others the dialogue tends to come to the fore rather than the narrative, which is a shame as the author is quite capable of writing some good descriptive scenes.
Personally, I felt the opening and closing chapters included to ‘set the scene’ were superfluous. It would have made more sense for the flow and continuity of time and place for the author to have launched straight into the story itself. That nit-pick aside, the novel is intelligently written and an entertaining read.
