3.5 stars

this was a difficult story to tell and i think barker does it decently well.
i'd heard people say that reading this book before song of achilles made it hard to like achilles because he's so much more violent in this story, but i still found him just as fascinating here. briseis's pov of him gives a less romanticised version of war, but still realistic. to be honest i was more interested in barker's version of achilles and patroclus than i was in briseis, up until about 3/4 of the way in. the development of achilles and briseis's relationship after patroclus's death was my favourite part of the story. i was surprised by the amount of achilles's grief we get to see, it makes him much more sympathetic, even within the self-awareness of his own violence and crimes. his grief opens up the relationship between himself and briseis, i thought their interactions here were the most promising and i would've liked to see more of that.
i did feel that the alternating povs were jarring and a little bizarre, although i recognise the difficulty of narrating a story like this. briseis's pov is first person past because she's given agency in this story, and achilles's pov is third person present because he doesn't get a future; i understand these are deliberate choices, especially as they both experience things that the other is not privy to, but it does give the overall novel a jumpy disjointed feeling.
admittedly some of the story got a bit muddled at points for me, where briseis's narration of life at the camps felt less like "pulling back the curtain on the trojan slaves" and more like a generic war account. my favourite part of camp life discussion is when briseis muses about how some women are able to love their new masters when they were the ones who had murdered their families; these types of thoughts are primarily in the beginning of the book and later transform more specifically into her thoughts about patroclus and achilles. another review calls the camp life discussion "tedious and repetitive" once achilles' perspective gets introduced and i'm inclined to agree. maybe it's intentional that achilles is still the most multi-faceted character in a book that claims to be about the women, like commentary that women's voices always get drowned out by men? who knows. i have conflicted thoughts about this.
overall i think barker did a really good job with the setting and the atmosphere, i did actually really enjoy achilles' character, i thought he was complex and unromanticised and flawed and i liked that a lot. i feel a little bit let down by briseis, whose narration seemed more monotonous than "wry" as the blurb suggested. again, i understand that it's difficult to write a retelling where you give agency to a character who canonically has none, so i think barker did well for the difficulties this narrative presents. briseis's closing monologue shamed me a bit, which was unexpected but not unappreciated, as i think it succeeds at wrapping up a story specifically designed to make the reader reevaluate the power of perspective in tales of heroism.