The plot begins when Greeks led by Achilles sack Lyrnessus, describing the looting and burning of the city, the massacre of its men and the abduction of its women including Briseis, the childless wife of king Mynes.

[1] The novel features appearances by many characters from the Iliad including Priam, Nestor, Ajax the Great, Agamemnon, and Helen of Troy.

"[9] Reviewers universally noted the novel's intense, often coarsely raw, portrayal of women's experience of war and its complete lack of glamorisation or praise of anything military.

Some reviewers (Gilbert in The Atlantic, Wilson in The Guardian) commented with disfavor on Barker's use of contemporary idioms, arguing that it was jarringly out of sync with the novel's Trojan-war backdrop.

Several noted the parallel with Circe by Madeline Miller, also from 2018 and also accomplished by turning a minor figure from Homeric myth into the protagonist of a novel.