Black Ships

I started Jo Graham's Black Ships last night, and so far it's quite good. I'm about 50 pages in, and it seems like a cross between Ursula K. Le Guin's The Tombs of Atuan and the Sevenwaters Trilogy by Juliet Marillier. The subject is more like Le Guin's book, while the first-person narative style and tone are more like Marillier. I truly enjoy both Le Guin's and Marillier's books (the earlier ones, at least), and I'm really enjoying the story so far.

I have noticed some slightly awkward bits, where she uses "it's" instead of "it is" — and in the two places she uses that, it would make more sense to be "it was" rather than "it's." Maybe I'm just being too picky. Other parts of the writing are quite good, and some seem to have double meanings that could very well be unintentional — or not. I appreciate that kind of cleverness as long as it isn't overdone. It isn't yet.

So have any of you started the book yet? What are your initial impressions?

Yup, I'm about 200 pages in and actually slowing down because I like it so much! Although I've read The Tombs of Atuan and Juliet Marillier's books, but I'm finding Black ships to be closer to Meghan Whalen Turner's Attolia books, with the spiritual elements closer to Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon.

I've also noticed some typos, which are to be expected in an ARC, but what does jar my reading experience are the occassional moments when Graham's characters pop out with modern English expressions (like being "keyed up") that I doubt anyone in Ancient Greece would have used.

That said, I am really, really enjoying this book. The algorithm really does have something on my reading tastes!

Well, I'm afraid my copy's been put on hold--I got my December book the day before Black Ships came, so I started that one first. I may have to go back and forth though since I'm more intrigued than I was before--I love LeGuin and the Earthsea series, though I really didn't appreciate The Mists of Avalon at all. Hmmmm....

I'm intrigued that you would compare Black Ships to the Attolia books, Tris. I ADORE those books and have read them multiple times (when, oh when is Turner coming out with the fourth one???). Are Graham's characters really as good as Turner's? I'll believe that when I see it. *is hoping though*

I haven't come across the modern slang yet, but I'm sure it will bug me too. I wonder, do they make any edits based on our conversations here?

I have Mists of Avalon but I haven't read it yet. Not sure if I'll care much for the glorification of druidic religion at the expense of Big Bad Christianity...

I started Black Ships this morning and have read a chapter. So far, so good! I'm intrigued by the comparison to LeGuin and Marillier. I enjoyed both of those series, so if that's any indication, I know I'm going to really like this book!

Agreed, agreed, agreed on Turner's books! That said, I didn't like The King of Attolia as much as the ealier two. The main character seemed more like a proxy through which Turner told her story than a character in his own right.

The Mists of Avalon doesn't particularly bother me. I interpreted the anti-Christian bias as belonging to the narrator whose own faith was threatened, and not as some sort of message I was meant to take away from the book. Besides, isn't MZB on record to the effect that MoA-esque religion makes no sense in modern society?

I'll be interested to see what you make of Gull's character when you've read a little farther.

I'm actually enjoying it far more than I thought I would when I picked it up. I expected it to be poorly written and self-absorbed, but it's well-written and engaging. It seems to have quite a vision and does not have a strong negative bias (while it's from a woman's point of view, it's not anti-men or anti-Western/Eastern culture, or any other point of view which would simply detract from the story).

Finished! My review is posted here.

Nice review, Tris! Mine is here: http://www.librarything.com/work/3285441/book/26044222

Posted mine: http://www.librarything.com/review/26550468

My copy just arrived - I'll start it tonight!

Thanks, wisewoman! After reading your review, I was wondering...

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...why the love triangle bothered you. I actually really appreciated it, since it strikes me as more realistic that Gull--as a teenager and relatively unsocialized one at that--would have conflicted feelings about the men she's close to; and narratively speaking as a nice and unusual touch that differentiated the book from so many others where readers can tell from page one who's going to end up with whom.

My review is up. I really, really enjoyed the book even though I was convinced before hand I might hate it! No spoilers in my current review, so feel free to read it even if you haven't completed the book.

Oops, forgot the URL http://www.librarything.com/work/details/26587385
should do it!

>12 Trismegistus:

Trismegistus, I agree. I really liked that it wasn't clear from day 1 of meeting them whether she'd wind up with either of them -- or anyone at all! Which is why the huge spoiler in the review pointed to in #14 saddens me -- it's going to lessen the reading experience for folks who see that review.

I see that's not the only review with the spoiler. Oh well, I know that's a topic that's been argued on LT before.

I forgot to post this earlier - here's my review: http://www.librarything.com/work/3285441/reviews/26294232

Finished it this morning, and loved it... my review is here.

Are we supposed to e-mail our review to Orbit or anything like that? I didn't see anything to that effect, but has anyone else sussed out an address?

Nice reviews, everyone. celestria and fyrefly, how do you get your review to show up like that on a page of its own? *is not terribly savvy about things like that*

I don't think there is an address for Orbit.

SPOILERS ahead, read at your own risk...

Tris wrote: After reading your review, I was wondering...why the love triangle bothered you.

I think the biggest reason it bothered me was that both Xandros and Gull were in love more or less with Neas. When Gull and Xandros *finally!* got together, it was like they were settling for each other. I got the strong impression that both of them would have left the other had Neas suddenly shown romantic interest in either.

On top of that, Gull and Xandros seemed to base their relationship on the mere physical attraction. If someone more attractive came along, well then... And that just didn't sit well with me.

And I think it was pretty obvious from the first who Gull was going to be with. As soon as Graham mentioned Xandros' "eyes of deep calm" or something like that, I knew.

And did anyone else find the whole Ashterah thing rather odd? Especially when they go down to the underworld and there she is. Xandros goes over to her and has a reunion of sorts. The whole time I'm thinking, "hmm, convenient that HIS WIFE AND CHILDREN aren't out and about down here! Wonder what his wife, who fought to the death to save her daughters, would think to see him embracing a eunuch priestess and not even sparing a thought for her?" That was kind of a big hole in the story, if you ask me.

Another thing that is admittedly my own personal take on the matter is that as a Christian I am not okay with homosexuality, so for me there was that dimension as well. I understand Graham herself is homosexual and that makes not a whit of difference to me in regards to her skill as a writer... I just found it hard to embrace those particular relationships. I understand that is my loss as far as enjoying the book.

So in our reviews we've mostly touted the good things (and many there are to tout!)... does anyone have any criticisms to make after letting the story and characters soak in a bit?

How do you get your review to show up like that on a page of its own?

Well, the easiest way is to click the little link icon at the bottom of your review, and copy the web address, but in general, if a book has has an address like:

/work/WORKNUMBER/BOOKNUMBER

or

/work/WORKNUMBER/book/BOOKNUMBER

Then the address for the review page is:

/review/BOOKNUMBER

or

/work/WORKNUMBER/reviews/BOOKNUMBER

>18 fyrefly98: This is the first ER book I've received that didn't come with a letter, business card or any other correspondence from the publisher. So I would say that posting your review on LT is good enough.

**SPOILERS **

>19 atimco: The love triangle didn't bother me very much. When Gull decided to go with the Wilusa, she was very young - maybe 17. She meets a few powerful men and has some feelings for both of them. It doesn't seem strange to me at all - it would have been stranger if she just settled on Xandros and essentially only had one love - or at least infatuation - for her entire life.

As for Xandros and Aeneas (sorry, that "Neas" as nickname thing really bothered me), I think it was much more Platonic - in the ancient Greek sense of the word Platonic. They had a Great Friendship - one that doesn't come around very often - and in any deep and abiding friendship like that there is also great love. I think by showing both Gull's and Xandros' deep love for Aeneas, Graham is also showing that Aeneas's personality - his being - was strong enough - charismatic enough - to be a great leader of a displaced people.

Ashterah: I was a bit more conflicted about the relationship between Xandros and Ashterah. It sort of seemed to come out of nowhere and didn't do much for the plot except to give Gull another reason to think that Xandros could never love her. When Ashterah dies and Xandros is in such grief - well, I didn't really buy it because Graham didn't really make their love very believable. I thought this was one of the weak points of the book.

So I was really surprised when Xandros saw Ashterah in the underworld - I didn't believe it earlier in the book, and I certainly didn't believe it by this time. However, I think Graham included it so that later Xandros could finally admit that he was happy to live, and that he loved Gull. The entire Asheterah part, though, to me seemed forced - IMHO it could have been left out of the book entirely without making dent on the plot or the effect of the characters on the readers.

Hurrah, discussion! (Picking books apart really does make me happy. I'm such a lit nerd.) Also SPOILERS BELOW THIS POINT!

Talbin: Exactly, and what's more, the dominant narrative ideal that falling in love with someone automatically precludes you from ever having similar feelings for another person isn't particularly realistic. Human relationships are a lot messier than that, which is why I thought the tension between Gull-Aeneas, Gull-Xandros, and Aeneas-Xandros was so well done.

wisewoman: I didn't feel that Gull and Xandros' relationship was based solely on the physical as much as that it started there and then progressed to respect and emotional attachment. Again, I found this to be a nicely realistic touch in that they didn't immediately recognize one another's sterling qualities but rather became gradually aware of them through time and familiarity--much like successful real life relationships. Also, Gull did rebuff Aeneas' advances in Egypt, which leads me to believe that she'd already made her choice, however unconsciously.

Incidentally, I also think Ashterah was the most underdeveloped aspect of the book, although I wonder how much this might have to do with editorial judgment. It's not hard to imagine some people having problems with homosexual relationships--not to mention eunuchs--playing a large role in a YA novel, thus impacting the title's commercial viability. (Not every reader will be as reasonable in their reactions as wisewoman.)

I can think of several reasons why Ashterah appeared in the underworld: Xandros' concern that her death had cursed him; narrative considerations that her death prompted a greater need for closure over those of Xandros' wife and children (who readers never "met" as they died before the story began); and the fact that at that point Xandros was still in much greater denial of his grief of their deaths than Ashterah's.

That said, I'm not sure whether I really believe any of those explanations myself!

>22 Trismegistus: You mention that Ashterah may have been underdeveloped as a character because this is a YA novel?

I'm pretty sure that Black Ships is not characterized as Young Adult?

Thanks fyrefly! That was very helpful :)

Talbin wrote: I think by showing both Gull's and Xandros' deep love for Aeneas, Graham is also showing that Aeneas's personality - his being - was strong enough - charismatic enough - to be a great leader of a displaced people.

I thought about that too, but I did see Xandros' attraction to Neas as sexual and I don't think a requisite for being a great leader is possessing magnetic sex appeal. Aeneas can be a great leader without making everyone head over heels for him.

Talbin wrote: When Ashterah dies and Xandros is in such grief - well, I didn't really buy it because Graham didn't really make their love very believable. I thought this was one of the weak points of the book.

Ditto that! I didn't understand his terrible grief either. Sure, he would have felt badly, but not despair over someone you'd known, what? 48 hours? There was no time for true love to blossom in that case. And I still felt that his wife and daughters were cheated. Wouldn't that have been an interesting tableau, to have Xandros meet up with them in the underworld instead of Ashterah...

Tris wrote: Also, Gull did rebuff Aeneas' advances in Egypt, which leads me to believe that she'd already made her choice, however unconsciously.

I didn't get the impression she rebuffed him; more that she was so surprised at him advancing at all in the first place that he took her shock for a rebuff. I think Gull herself felt a little regretful over the whole thing, myself. Like she wished she'd not given him that impression.

And I don't think this was marketed as a YA novel, though it certainly could be.

My Review

It has been interesting reading others' reactions about this ARC. Did anyone else catch that Hry went from drinking melon water in one paragraph to lemon water in the next?

I think that, without trying to explain it openly in the novel, Jo Graham is acknowledging the ancient Greeks' (and presumably Wilusans') open attitude to love between men and men, and men and women. From the brush with it through ancient history and classics that I read in my long-gone university days (it wasn't my field so I have retained few details), I learned that men pair-bonded on and off the field of war (e.g., Alexander the Great and whatshisname), with no hesitation to die for the other person in battle or to express this love sexually. Love between men was considered one of the deepest loves possible - here's where I get murky...because they are the same, so would have the deepest understanding, I think. The Celts were the same, often sleeping with other males, including multiple bondings. They didn't give this a thought and it doesn't seem to have been considered abnormal or disgusting. They were much less inhibited, as far as I can tell, about love and sex, than we are today. Early literature certainly shows that love of man to woman was also a powerful force, procreation notwithstanding. In other words, loving and expressing it openly and fully wasn't tied to procreation but was expressed between people who loved, period. Hope this all makes sense - I feel like I'm rambling (tired).

So I read Xandros' attraction to Neas as the complete and total love of a man for his leader, literally willing to follow him to the gates of death but also, had an opportunity been given, willing to express his love physically. As for Xandros and Ashterah and the purpose of their relationship in the novel...to tell you the truth, it didn't make much of an impression on me, so I didn't give it that much thought. Maybe he was truly bisexual, capable of loving Ashterah as fully as he had loved his wife. Or perhaps Graham just needed some kind of vehicle to show how deep the feeling of being defenceless to protect those he loved ran in Xandros but it was one of the weaker elements in her story, if that's what she was doing.

I think that magnetism is part of being a great leader, that pull that will bring people to you on every level. I think there is always an element of the sensual in there (look at Kennedy, Clinton, Pierre Trudeau)(even if they aren't your taste!). So I had no problem believing that that pull exerted itself on both Gull and Xandros from Aeneas.

I liked Graham's understated tone with Gull/Pythia. It might have been tempting to have great histrionics as she gave her prophecies but the connection to The Lady was an internal and, at times, pragmatic one. She handled the dichotomy between person and voice of the goddess very realistically. Like others, I was surprised to like the story as much as I did. As a first novel, I think she has done an excellent job of it and certainly knows her Virgil.

Talbin: I'd just assumed that Black Ships was a YA novel, because that's how it reads to me (i.e. much less sex and violence where they could have been included), and based on the cover art. But that's all I'm going on. I'll be interested in seeing where bookstores shelve it once it's released.

Digging around on the Internet, I found the author's journal, where she writes this in a longer section concerning the Ashterah question: All of the people that any of them see in the Challenge section of their quest are people with whom they have unfinished business, souls who are not at rest or people about whom the travelers still feel conflicted. So there it is from the horse's mouth.

Tiffin: Yup, it was on page 210. ;)

And I agree with pretty much everything you've said above. You can add East Asian countries to the list of pre-modern cultures of which (male) homosexuality was a feature, especially among the warrior classes, although I'd quibble with what you've written above and say that no matter where it was found, men were still expected to marry and procreate. In other words, love and procreation were decoupled, but society expected you to father children and there was no opting into an equivalent to the encompassing homosexual identity of modern Western culture.

Again, that's one of the main issues that my enjoyment of this book boils down to: Graham acknowledges a lot of the historically different aspects of the book's time period without anachronistically discussing them. They just were as far as her characters were concerned.

>26 Trismegistus: Graham acknowledges a lot of the historically different aspects of the book's time period without anachronistically discussing them. They just were as far as her characters were concerned.

Trismegistus - thank you for saying perfectly what I had been trying to find a way to articulate. Ashterah didn't really bother me (or make much of an impact), because that's just the way things were. That's what temple prostitutes (men and women) were, and what they were there for. Similarly, the homosexual aspects of the "love triangle" didn't even register as problematic, because the notion of being 100% gay or 100% straight is fairly recent - it certainly wasn't around back in the day. The notion that being in love with a man precluded you from being in love with a woman (or vice versa) would have sounded strange and probably even laughable to any of Graham's characters.

Trismegistus, I agree with your quibble 100%. You worded it much better than I did and said what I was bumbling around trying to get at.

Fyrefly, I had the same non-reaction as you did to Ashterah. Maybe, in hindsight, Xandros is being shown as a fundamentally good person because he doesn't treat a temple prostitute as a nothing, refusing to leave "her" to be killed by the Achaians?

I didn't get this book when I requested it, but my local library now has it available for reserves. After I read the discussion so far, I am now first on the list for it.

Estelle -

I've done that for other ER books... so in terms of garnering publicity, hopefully the publishers feel like they're getting their money's worth!

I hope you enjoy Black Ships - it's easily among the best books that I've read so far this year.

I went out and bought Black Ships, and it was in the regular fantasy section, not YA. Though actually, I saw it first on the display table at the front, which was fortunate--I hadn't realized that it was being released in paperback, or I would have bought it much sooner!

So, I'm coming to this discussion a bit late, but oh well.

Spoilers.

About the love triangle, I agree with Talbin (The love triangle didn't bother me very much.... She meets a few powerful men and has some feelings for both of them.) and fyrefly (Similarly, the homosexual aspects of the "love triangle" didn't even register as problematic, because the notion of being 100% gay or 100% straight is fairly recent).

And I definitely agree with Trismegistus that one of the best things was how Graham acknowledges a lot of the historically different aspects of the book's time period without anachronistically discussing them. I was really impressed with how natural everything seemed, and also with how logically she fit together the literary and archaeological evidence to create an entirely believable world.

One part that seemed a bit strange to me was Basetamon. I can't remember the Aeneid clearly enough, but was Dido crazy? I thought she was abandoned by Aeneas just because it was his fate to leave and found a new city, not through any fault of her own. So it seemed to me that Graham's Aeneas was a bit too incapable of doing any wrong; no one could fault him for leaving when Basetamon was threatening his loved ones.

Overall, though, I loved the book.

>31 _Zoe_:

You're correct there: one could describe Dido's actions after Aeneas left as going crazy, but she didn't do anything to drive him away. As I remember, Mercury showed up and told Aeneas that he had better get going.

Still waiting for my copy of Black Ships to turn up at the library.

It finally turned up at one of the three libraries I have cards for. (None of which, incidentally, seem to have classed it as YA.) I still have about fifty pages left in it.

Over all, I quite like it. As others have said, the handling of the sexual relationships is authentic to the culture of the times, and it isn't explained in an anachronistic way. Classical Greeks considered magnetism, not entirely seperated from sexual magnetism, to be a requirement for a great leader. That doesn't mean that Greeks and Trojans at the time of the Trojan War (pre-democratic societies and therefore not necessarily as interested in the power to sway a crowd) would have considered it as necessary. However the fact that we don't have writings about political theory from a time multiple centuries before The Iliad was written down doesn't mean that none of those ideas were around, it just means we can't ever really know- and in a world with so many kings and princes running around on the same side of a war, I wouldn't be surprised if powers of persuasion (including a certain level of seduction, if only intellectual) were required. It wouldn't surprise me in the least if the love Aeneas inspired in his followers did have physical elements.

The relationship between Gull and Xandros may have started as being based largely on physical attraction, but it had clearly developed into more than that by the trip to the Underworld. I'm not sure what I think of Xandros seeing a temple prostitute instead of his wife and family, but I'm willing to entertain the theory that it was because he felt more directly responsible for that death. And after all, Aeneas saw Dido instead of his wife, so it's in keeping with the original.

"Neas" sort of bugs me. I'm wondering where Graham got the idea that was an appropriate formation of a nickname. I don't know enough about how Greek/Trojan nicknames would have been formed to say that it isn't, or that there's a way to tell what an appropriate nickname would have been short of an extant use of one from the Aenead or earlier, but it seems sort of random and nickname formation can vary enough by the conventions of a particular language that I don't care for ones invented without a basis on those conventions.

I'll have to come back to this later; I will have to move to a different computer in a minute.

ETA: I'm back, and I have one other complaint: Aeneas and the Sybil left the Underworld through the gate of false dreams. Why, I don't know, but I enjoy reading the various ideas people have had on the subject in the past two thousand years. I was looking forward to seeing if Graham attempted to shed any light on that idea, and then she changed it. I'd like to have a conversation with Graham about her choice to have them use the gate of true dreams. I don't know if it would bother me much if I knew she had considered it carefully, including the various reasons it might have originally been the gate of false dreams and why she was willing to disregard them.

In general, it has been a good book so far. I'm wondering how half the Aenead is going to happen in the last fifty pages, but unless she has the war in Italy not happen at all, I imagine I'll buy my own copy eventually.

I thought the purpose of the nickname might be to distance us a bit from our preconceptions about the story.

>33 Unreachableshelf:/34 - I thought that maybe Graham was trying to personalize Aeneas, but as I mentioned in #21 (and in agreement with EstelleChauvelin) I found the use of the nickname extremely annoying. I'm sure it was no problem for others, but somehow it was grating to me.

Weighing in re the gate of false dreams and the authenticity of the use of Neas as a nickname: although Graham did use the Aeneid as the inspiration and basic outline for her story, Black Ships is first and foremost a novel, a fiction. I let the author take me where she would and relaxed into her narrative without feeling jarred when she went off in her own direction or left things out. By casting a woman as the main protagonist, she lets us know from the get go that she's not rewriting the Aeneid...in the original, the heroes were men.

I interpreted the use of "true dreams" as the author saying that everything that happens here, although the result of a drug, is nonetheless to be perceived as authentic, to be believed, both by the reader and the participants.

As for the nickname, after several mentioned that it irked them, I decided that it had come across to this reader as merely a device to show the degree of intimacy and friendship which existed between Pythia and Aeneas. To be honest it barely registered while reading the book. Would early Greeks would be any less inclined to nickname than we are today?

Talbin, I agree re how individual things can grate in a book. I just finished another ARC and was nearly spazzed out at the incorrect use of words ("animus" was one in particular which had me spitting). Other reviewers seemed to barely register this, while I had things all underlined and the pages marked with page points!

>36 tiffin: Would early Greeks would be any less inclined to nickname than we are today?

Absolutely not. It just bothers me in this case because I don't think there's any reason to believe that Neas would be the proper nickname for Aeneas. If I knew that followed a standard convention in ancient Greek, it wouldn't have bothered me at all. E.g., my actual first name is Kristen. You could make a reasonable guess that my friends and family might call me Kris, Krissy, or Kristy, but you know they would not call me Ten. "Neas" bothers me because I don't know if it's like calling me Kris or calling me Ten.

>37 Unreachableshelf:

On the other hand, I've gotten both "Nick" and "Cole" for Nicole. I'm guessing she went with "Neas" because "Annie"'s got its own problems.

#37
I just finished reading a book where the main character's name was Elizabeth, but she went by Betts. This annoyed me to no end (the book annoyed me even more, but that's another topic). Beth, on the other hand, would've been fine. Though not as common, I think there are quite a few nicknames that come from the end of the person's name. Margarita (Rita), Isabelle (Belle), Alyssa (Lyssa) just to name a few.

I don't know that there's always much logic--I've worked at a theater for years, and a some point the crew started calling me N'fer (short for Jennifer). It's strange, but it came about honestly and still means affection. In any case, just thought I'd throw in my two cents while I was exploring more thoughts on the book.

#39
My name is Elisabeth and I go by Betsy, which is one of the standard nicknames for Elisabeth/Elizabeth, and I'm often called "Bets" for short. It's not as strange as you would think.

>38 fyrefly98:,39: There are other ways to construct nicknames than just taking one sylable or the other, though. Diminutive construction in English, for example. Krissy for Kristen, or Danny for Daniel, involve not only removing but adding letters. Latin has equivalents such as replacing -us with -ulus. I'm afraid my Latin degree didn't require enough Ancient Greek that I know any of them off the top of my head, though. Neas might be perfectly valid, I just don't know.

It turns out Jo Graham has a LiveJournal. Her username is just jo_graham, if any of you would like to check it out. She had been answering questions like "Why is Basetamon crazy when Dido wasn't?" (Answer: An Ancient Egyptian would believe burning herself would destroy her access to the afterlife, so only a crazy woman would think that was a valid response to being left by a boyfriend of six months.)

I figured I might as well ask her why the gate of true dreams (which really is a better question than "what kind of research have you done on ancient Greek nickname construction"). The answer more or less boiled down to that her interpretation of why Aeneas and the Sybil originally left through the gate of false dreams related to a portion of the voyage of the underworld which doesn't take place in Black Ships. The part that she kept was a true vision, therefore the gate of true dreams. Starting from that interpretation of the original, I agree that it was a sensible change to make.

Thanks for mentioning her livejournal! I had looked at it once, but didn't go back. I'm glad to see it answers exactly the question I had ("Why is Basetamon crazy when Dido wasn't?"). I still don't think I entirely agree with it, though. She could have been a bit unstable and been driven completely over the edge when Aeneas left her; when she's crazy to begin with Aeneas comes off as a bit too perfect.

I'd say you should go ahead with asking about ancient Greek nickname construction. I think Greek diminutives usually include -io-, like paidion as the diminutive as pais. But since she was using Hittite names a lot (Wilusa, Millawanda) I'm not sure that helps.

>43 _Zoe_:

I agree with your idea. I think she was right that making Basetamon crazy makes it logical for her to commit suicide, but I don't think she needed to make her crazy in a way that involved threatening Aeneas' loved ones. Yes, it absolves Aeneas of any guilt for leaving her in the readers' eyes, but he already had a perfectly good reason for leaving her in that the gods wanted him to. His epithet in Virgil is pious Aeneas (dutiful would also work in an English translation). Making Basetamon dangerous makes Black Ships comparatively simple, morally, and it's not the only part that does. Which isn't to say I don't like it quite a lot and plan to buy my own copy so I can reread it whenever I want, but it explains why I'm not absolutely crazy in love with it.

Estelle, I'd be glad to mooch you my copy, if you'd like. I don't plan to read it again. If you just put your address on my profile page, privately, I'll send it to you.