The Wolf-Girl, the Greeks, and the Gods: A Tale of the Persian Wars

by Tom Holland Narrated by Victoria Fox

Overview

The magic of mythology meets the grit of history in a blazing blockbuster retelling of the Persian Wars from award-winning author Tom Holland.

I come to tell you a story. A story unlike any that has been told before.

The Trojan War is ancient history. The gods of Olympus are silent and have not appeared to mortals for generations. In the city-state of Sparta, young Gorgo's mother gives a warning with her dying breath: the Persians are coming. The princess Gorgo, weaned on her nurse's stories of gods and shapeshifters, never forgets her mother's last words. When at last the drums of war begin to sound, she is swept up in a dangerous game of politics, treachery, and vengeance. With the blood of Herakles and Zeus himself running through her veins and the awakening of a dormant supernatural power, Gorgo, now queen of Sparta, must help lead her city-state against a mighty empire. Unraveling like prophecy, Tom Holland's dramatic reimagining of one of history's most formidable wars will echo through the mind of the reader long after they have reached the final words.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

★ 09/09/2024

In this epic tale, lavishly illustrated by Cockcroft (A Song of Sun and Sky), Holland (Pax: War and Peace in Rome’s Golden Age) mixes reality and mythology to tell of the Persian Wars through the eyes of Gorgo, the eventual queen of Sparta who grew up in a world teeming with violence and magic, where gods actively influenced the course of events and the tides of war. Via straightforward yet lilting narration, through which Gorgo ages from tweendom to adulthood, she shares stories of gods, heroes, mortals, and monsters, as told to her by the people in her life. Over the course of her storytelling, Gorgo finds herself embroiled in matters of politics and diplomacy, becoming instrumental in guiding her people through years of strife and uncertainty when the Persian Empire—led by Xerxes, the mighty King of Kings—threatens to conquer Sparta. Historian Holland draws from his subject-matter expertise to deliver an accessible, educational, and engaging reimagining of Herodotus’s Histories. Though it’s easy to become overwhelmed by the plethora of characters, events, and myths covered here, it’s a fascinating work and an ideal primer for curious readers and Greek history enthusiasts alike. Ages 9–12. (Nov.)

From the Publisher

In this epic tale, lavishly illustrated by Cockcroft, Holland mixes reality and mythology to tell of the Persian Wars. . . . A fascinating work and an ideal primer for curious readers and Greek history enthusiasts alike.
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

Atmospheric illustrations ratchet up the melodrama in this retelling of the war between the Greeks and Persians. . . Dark and brutal.
—Kirkus Reviews

What a fabulous achievement! Not since Mary Renault has this kind of history come so alive and with such juice, energy, and excitement. I just know that my twelve-year-old self would have fallen on this like a . . . like a wolf on a lamb. Breathtaking adventure on every page, and just the kind of detail, color, and vitality that young readers adore. As does this old reader, I have to confess.
—Stephen Fry, actor, director, and author of Stephen Fry’s Great Mythology, volumes 1–4: Mythos, Heroes, Troy, and The Odyssey

A glorious mixture—of history, fiction, and thrilling legend, with pictures to swim the Hellespont for.
—Sebastian Faulks, journalist and acclaimed author of historical novels for adults, including Birdsong, Snow Country, and The Seventh Son

The Wolf-Girl, the Greeks, and the Gods is a wonder, as beautiful to look at as it is entrancing to read. Jason Cockcroft’s illustrations are jaw-dropping, and Tom Holland’s prose took me back to my own childhood introductions to these extraordinary mythological worlds in Roger Lancelyn Green’s Tales of the Greek Heroes and Leon Garfield’s and Charles Keeping’s The God Beneath the Sea.
—Frank Cottrell Boyce, screenwriter and author of Cosmic and Carnegie Medal winner Millions

Cloaked in mystery, sharp with danger, powerful in its bones, The Wolf-Girl, the Greeks, and the Gods is a modern myth of an ancient time that I wish I read as a boy, and will reread until I’m rickety and gray.
—Pierce Brown, #1 New York Times best-selling author of the Red Rising Saga

Kirkus Reviews

2024-08-30
Atmospheric illustrations ratchet up the melodrama in this retelling of the war between the Greeks and Persians.

Plainly influenced by ancient vase paintings, Cockcroft places slender, actively posed, geometrically planed warriors and women into darkly clouded settings sometimes splashed with red to reinforce the grim tone of a narrative delivered by Gorgo, daughter of a Spartan king. Like nearly everyone in the cast except the Greek gods and demigods who put in occasional appearances, she was a real historical figure. Though Holland reifies ancient legends by having Athenian girls literally turn into bears at will and Spartans of both sexes into wolves, he also sticks closely to the historical plotline while delivering pithy accounts of numerous myths and disturbing details of growing up in Sparta. Gorgo lays out in detail the political situation that led to the successive invasions and recounts Greek heroics at the battles of Marathon, Salamis, and Plataea. As a wolf, she witnesses the doomed stand of her husband (and half uncle) Leonidas at Thermopylae, with the illustrator treating readers to the particularly lurid sight of Leonidas’ severed head mounted on a spear. “Know that what you have read is the truth,” she concludes, but what may stick with readers is not so much what happened as the violence the book glorifies. Characters are pictured with a variety of skin tones.

Dark and brutal. (cast gallery, map)(Fictionalized history. 11-14)

Product Details

BN ID:	2940192722558
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	11/05/2024
Edition description:	Unabridged
Age Range:	8 - 11 Years

Read an Excerpt

1
 A NIGHTTIME JOURNEY
 
Hear me! My name is Gorgo. I am a Spartan queen. I come to tell you a story. A story unlike any that has been told before. It is the story of the greatest war ever fought. Years it lasted. Famous cities went up in flames. Mighty heroes, the pride of Greece and Asia, won undying glory for themselves. Some died before their time, and their shades fled down to the underworld. Others, when the war was done, met with equally unhappy fates. One, returning from the war, was murdered in his own palace. Another, a man of tricks and turns, the great schemer who did more than anyone else to secure victory for the Greeks, roams the world to this day. Who knows if he will ever make it home?
   I too, in the years since the war, have roamed the world. I have spoken to those who fought and survived. I have toured the fields and sailed the waters where the battles were decided. I have sought to understand everything that happened. How it was that East and West came to go to war. I played my own small part; I will tell you how. But this is not just my story. It is the story of everyone who played a part—gods as well as men. A story unlike any you will ever have read.
   Perhaps, though, if I had not woken up one night when I was a little girl and found a wolf staring down at me, I would never be telling you this. My story begins one afternoon when I went up the slopes of Taygetus, the savage, five-peaked mountain that separates Sparta from the land of the Messenians. My friends and I had never explored there before. We had always wanted to, and as my father, the king, was away at war, and my mother was sick in her bed, there was no one to stop us.
   All afternoon we played. As the sun began to set, we realized that we were lost. Perhaps some of us wanted to cry. But none of us did. We had been raised never to show any sign of fear. So we curled up on the bare ground. We talked. We fell asleep.
   Then, when I woke sud-denly and found the wolf staring down directly at me, his breath heavy on my face, I did let out a little scream. It is shameful to admit this, of course—but since it is my intention, as I write, always to tell the truth, I do not deny it. The wolf’s eyes were very yellow; they seemed to blaze. The creature himself was a monstrous size. His mouth was so huge and his jaws so sharp that I knew he could easily snap off my head with a single bite. I stared at him, and he stared at me. I felt the cool of the night against my skin and wondered if this would be the last thing I ever felt.
   Then the wolf gave a soft yowl. He lay down on all fours and looked at me again. It seemed he was waiting. I reached out and touched him. The wolf did not move, save to gesture with his head. I stroked him; his fur was very thick. I rose to my feet. A second time the wolf gestured with his head. I laid my ear to his flank. I could hear his great heart pulsing. He shifted. He still seemed to be waiting for me to do something. Then suddenly I understood. I clambered onto his back and gripped the fur on his massive shoulders. The wolf rose to his feet. He sniffed the air. And then, with a soaring leap, we were away.
   Like a dream it was, that ride. Down the slopes of Taygetus, through shadow and across moonlit glades, until at last we came to Sparta. Onward the wolf loped. Only when we came to the house where my mother lay ill did he finally stop. I slid off his back. He whined gently and licked my face. His tongue was very rough.
   Then he was gone, and I wondered if I had imagined him. But there I was, outside my mother’s sickroom. That was real enough. Clearly the wolf must have brought me back home to Sparta for a reason. And so I went inside.
   The women attending my mother were startled to see me. One of them put down the wet cloth with which she had been mopping her patient’s brow and tried to shoo me away. But my mother raised a hand.
   “No,” she whispered, and gestured to the attendants to leave.
   She stretched out her arms and I folded myself against her. How hot she felt! Hotter than she had ever felt before. Her breathing was ragged and labored.
   “Mama,” I whispered. I snuggled myself up against her even more tightly.
   For a long time we lay together in silence. Then, raising her head, my mother tried to speak.
   “Gorgo.”
   “Mama?”
   She swallowed. I could feel her mustering all her energy. “In Athens . . .” she murmured. Her voice trailed away. She tried a second time. “In Athens . . . the girls, the Athenian girls . . .”
   “Yes, Mama?”
   “They turn into bears.”
   I looked up at her. I had no idea why she had told me this. Where was Athens? Why did the girls turn into bears? What was it to me?
   “Your father . . .” my mother whispered. “I . . . I have failed to give him a son. But you, Gorgo, you . . .” She squeezed my hand and looked into my eyes. They glittered with desperation. She beckoned me closer. I laid my ear against her mouth. Her lips felt as though they were on fire.
   “Danger is coming,” she mumbled hoarsely. “Your father . . .  Sparta . . .” She gasped. I could sense her summoning all her strength. When she finally spoke, it was an urgent, protracted wheeze. “The Persians—” She coughed violently, and blood spattered her chest. “The Persians are coming.” And then she slumped back onto her pillows. She was gasping for air.
   I clung to her. “Mama,” I whispered. “I love you. Mama, do not go.”
   But it was too late.
   And I lay there, still hugging her tightly, until the attendants came back and realized what had happened and began to raise the cries of mourning.

Videos