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REVIEWS ON LI N E E XC LUSI V ES Due to an ever-increasing number of books for review and space constraints within HNR, some selected fiction reviews and all nonfiction reviews are now published as online exclusives. To view these reviews and much more, please visit www.historicalnovelsociety.org/reviews
TO T H E E DI TOR : Regarding the reviewer’s comments about my novel When Cities Sink Howling in Ruin (HNR 97): “… just long enough to be killed”: Of the characters listed in the “cast of characters” that die, the average number of pages between the time they’re introduced and the time they die is 341 pages. (Cannon fodder don’t warrant back stories.) “… seem to have little depth to them”: I’ll try to give the vaguest outline of Iakos’ experiences and their effect on his character: 1. Starts out as a vain, shallow 19-year-old with a naïve view of battle. 2. Comes to know war’s terror. 3. Sails around the Mediterranean, seeing civilization after civilization destroyed. 4. Returns home to find his city destroyed and his mother dismembered. 5. Becomes catatonic from the horror. 6. Emerges from catatonia a psychological wreck: panic attacks. PTSD. Suicide attempt. Too emotionally devastated and cowardly to avenge his parents…. Many more experiences and psychological developments await Iakos, including of course the climax and resolution. Note that Aithon is even more nuanced. “the black man”: Shallow Iakos is the only one who calls Eurybates “the black man.” Other characters chide him for it. K. Partridge
A NC I E N T H I STORY KEZIAH’S SONG Daryl Potter, Paper Stone Press, 2021, $12.95/£9.99, pb, 396pp, 9781777307301
135 BC. When her parents are cast out and her little brother killed, Keziah is rescued from the village mob by a shopkeeper and taken to live with her aunt. Meanwhile, her brother, Joazar, has become one of the Seleucid Empire’s hostages taken to ensure Jerusalem’s submission. During this time, Joazar befriends the treasurer, Jugurtha. When fortunes change and the treasurer’s former master marches to reclaim the Seleucid throne, the pair escape back to Jerusalem. Jugurtha enters Jerusalem’s 16
political games, but Joazar travels to Galilee to find his sister and settle down. However, war continues to threaten the land, calling him back to the life he hoped to leave behind. In truth, this is Joazar’s story. We follow him in times of war and politics, which Keziah is largely left out of due to social convention. We get snippets of her between scenes of armies and skirmishes. Keziah’s growth and healing arise from playing the lute. In this way, the prose arises like a harmonious composition of music, flitting through minor and major chords. I savored descriptions like, “Spires of wind-borne dust appeared as sudden witnesses over the land, spying over the fields, spending themselves, and then ceasing to exist as the grains fell back to earth with a faint staccato.” However, the prose employs a thirdperson style that isn’t always suited for highly emotional moments. It’s hard to connect with characters when, before something impactful happens, the scene cuts away. Readers miss out on Keziah falling in love, what happens after they find Little Sarah, and Moshe’s turmoil after the Egyptian attacks. Potter has a gift for lush imagery, bringing Maccabean Israel to life in beautiful and brutal ways. While the book lacks the emotional impact a drama like this needs, it is overall highly enjoyable. J. Lynn Else
STARLIGHT IN THE DAWN Naveen Sridhar, Independently published, 2021, $10.99, pb, 252pp, 9798502534246
The city of Ur, about 2300 BCE: Sargon the Great rules the Akkadian Empire, and his daughter Enheduanna is the high priestess of Ur. Enheduanna is an intelligent, spirited, and talented woman, creating new hymns to worship the goddess Inanna and the moon god Sin. She’s the earliest named poet in history. In Starlight in the Dawn, we’re given a fictionalized version of Enheduanna’s life: a life of passion and conflict. For not everyone is happy to serve Sargon’s empire. Lugalanne, King of Uruk, schemes to usurp Sargon’s throne—and Enheduanna becomes entangled in the resistance to Lugalanne’s plots. Not only her life, but the religion she loves, is endangered, but she perseveres, creating peace and finding love. Starlight in the Dawn is a mixed bag. The story’s good, but the writing is awkward. However, English is not the author’s first language (or even perhaps his second, as he speaks eight languages), and the historical details, the vivid feeling of what it might have been like to live in ancient Ur, make up for that. It’s always exciting to discover an influential historical woman of whom one’s never heard, and Enheduanna is an exhilarating find.
REVIEWS | Issue 98, November 2021
India Edghill
SISILIAN PRINSESSA (“The Sicilian Princess”) Jukka M. Heikkilä, Karisto, 2021, €36.90, hb, 236pp, 9789511377412
This novel, written in Finnish, is set in the period 310-240 BC, when great political powers contended for dominance in the Mediterranean and Near East after the era of Alexander the Great. Agathocles, King of Sicily, marries his daughter, Princess Lanassa, to Pyrrhus, King of Epirus. She becomes a pawn in a political intrigue, charged with bearing sons and putting up with her husband’s other wives. But Lanassa, fed up with her selfish husband’s lust for power, leaves him. She marries her husband’s enemy, Demetrius, King of Macedonia. In the process, she becomes the first goddess of the Hellenes, worshipped and adored by the common people. She experiences fabulous luxury in a world where even the gods seem to be utterly brutal. In this work, the Finnish author, Jukka M. Heikkilä, who has a deep knowledge of ancient history, skilfully opens a window into the antique world. Familiar historic names come to life in a new way. He describes life in the age of warriors and kings from a woman’s point of view. If you didn’t like school history books, here’s a book that will make history accessible and spark your interest in a new way. This story is easy to read and inspiring. Riitta Steiner
PROTECTOR Conn Iggulden, Pegasus, 2021, $26.95, hb, 432pp, 9781643138176 / Michael Joseph, 2021, £20.00, hb, 416pp, 9780241420423
Protector picks up where Conn Iggulden’s first book (The Gates of Athens) in his new Athenian series left off: in 480 BCE, with the sprawling forces of Persia threatening to overwhelm the peoples of Greece. After making a valiant stand at Thermopylae, the Greeks have retreated to Salamis, an island west of Athens. And the Persians have followed. Iggulden plunges us into the action almost immediately, detailing how the surrounding waters become “a slick of splinters and corpses” as Greek triremes—nimble warships crewed by three rows of oarsmen and tipped with a ship-killing bronze ram—do their best to survive against a vast fleet of Persian galleys as Athens burns in the distance. The details are evocative, and the stakes are high throughout, as one character notes, “no one keeps a reserve in a fight with a bear. It was all or nothing, for a future as free men or slaves.” Iggulden also touches on the hypocrisy of that sentiment. The Greeks saw bending the knee to Persia as an unacceptable form of subjugation, yet they thought little of owning slaves themselves. But while I appreciate that Iggulden brings this issue to light, I wish Protector had investigated it further. Most of the point-ofview characters in the book are generals and
