Blodeuedd's Monday Review: The Voyage Home by Pat Barker

Series: Women of Troy (#3)

Format: 336 pages, Paperback

Published: April 12, 2025 by Penguin

Historical fiction/library

War is horrible, and all women of Troy got to experience the worst. Here we have Ritsa, once a healer now a slave and serving Cassandra. Who is also a slave, but given to Agamemnon. And she knows she will die, and I know she will die. So I just keep waiting for that eventual doom.

But this is Ritsa´s book. We see how crazy Cassandra is, made so by Apollo that ahole. Not to mention after suffering horrific things after the fall of Troy.

There is a a bit on a ship and then the arrive, and the countdown begins. Because they will die....well I did not know about Ritsa so I had hope. She just pushed through. Like everyone else she just thought Cassandra was crazy and not giving prophecies.

A good book. Does make me hate men though.

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.

Book Review: Regeneration by Pat Barker

Author: Pat Barker

Title: Regeneration

Series: Regeneration #1

Genre: Historical Fiction

Format: ebook

Pages: 260

Published: May 30, 1991

Where I got It: My shelf (Amazon)

Summary: 

In 1917 Siegfried Sasson, noted poet and decorated war hero, publicly refused to continue serving as a British officer in World War I. His reason: the war was a senseless slaughter. He was officially classified "mentally unsound" and sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital. There a brilliant psychiatrist, Dr. William Rivers, set about restoring Sassoon’s “sanity” and sending him back to the trenches. This novel tells what happened as only a novel can. It is a war saga in which not a shot is fired. It is a story of a battle for a man's mind in which only the reader can decide who is the victor, who the vanquished, and who the victim.

Review:

This has been on TBR list for eoooons. Since High School! *coughs* Many, many years. Eek. So the TBR challenge was perfect to get me to dust this bad boy off and give it a read. 

It is 1917 and Siegfried Sasson refuses to continue fighting in the war. He is a noted poet and decorated war hero, but he is done. He views the war as senseless and just too much death. He is officially classified as "mentally unsound" and sent to the Craiglockhart War Hospital. Dr Rivers is given the task to fix him and get him back to the trenches. They need a man like him to help win the war. 

This started off so, so, so good. I really was enjoying it. This really digs deep into mental issues, war, trauma, morals, taboos of the time (like homosexuality), and so much more. It was deep and we see the war from a different viewpoint.

I had zero idea that this was based off of a real person. Naturally, when I was done reading, I had to do some digging and research on the fella. Very controversial person in his time. I think the author did a great job bringing him to life and giving us a possible look behind the mask. 

I enjoyed it overall. But the last quarter of the book...bored me. That sounds SOOOO bad, but I was ready to be done. Honestly, I think this should've been a novella. Lots and lots and lots of talking. Which I enjoyed, for the most part, but I found myself wanting to skim. It could've been the writing style lost me a bit as well. The flow was jarring and disjointed sometimes. 

All-in-all, I liked this. I'm glad I finally got my hands on this and can remove it from my TBR list. I needed a nice serious novel and this gave me what I wanted. We got some deep dives into many issues of the time and to be fair...we still struggle with some of these issues. It was good even with my issues of the last quarter of the book. I'll stamp  this with 3 stars. 

 Challenge(s):

- TBR (Back in My Day) #7

Book Review - Another World

Author: Pat Barker

Title: Another World
Genre:  Historical Fiction, Drama, Fiction, Contemporary Fiction
Pages: 288

First Published: 1998
Where I Got It: My shelf (forgot where)


"Plagued by nightmarish memories of the trenches where he saw his brother die, Nick's grandfather Gordie lays dying as Nick struggles to keep the peace in his increasingly fractious home. As Nick's suburban family loses control over their world, Nick begins to learn his grandfather's buried secrets and comes to understand the power of old wounds to leak into the present. As a study of the power of memory and loss, Another World conveys with extraordinary intensity the ways in which the violent past returns to haunt and distort the present."


This is the first book by Pat Barker I have read, but it won't be the last. 


Okay...this book took ME FOREVER to read! Not because it was extremely long or anything, it was me. You know those stories that you should be interested in and normally you are, but you just arn't? This book was that book for me. 


A nice family drama mixed in with historical bits is usually right up my alley, but for some reason I didn't really care much about these people. Perhaps it was because I couldn't connect with them. I only cared about Gordie, the grandad who was dying. I felt horrible for him! Poor guy. He survived WWI and a stab to the gut from a bayonet. He survived cancer. However, in the end he had a stroke and had to live in misery the last few weeks of his life. 


Throughout the story while grandad is suffering from his troubled past and side-effects of the stroke, Nick and his family are being all butts and selfish. I just didn't care about Nick and his little family of drama-kings and drama-queens.


After reading some other reviews, I guess the struggles of the family was suppose to somehow connect with grandad's WWI past. I guess I missed it. I have no idea. I really wished that the story was revolved around grandad more. 


Don't get me wrong...I loved Pat Barker's writing and I can't wait to read another of her books, but this was not the tale for me. I wouldn't really recommend this book to others, but I would suggest reading one of her other books. She's a wonderful author! She has great potential! There isn't much else to say and I feel bad that my review is relatively short. Oh well. Out of five stars I grant this one 1 star. :( 


Favorite Character(s): Gordie/Grandad
Not-so Favorite Character(s): everyone else.

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