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Reviews: In the Moon of Asterion
At Booksquawk, April 11, 2013:
In The Moon of Asterion may be the grand finale of The Child of the Erinyes trilogy, but as the author points out in the blurb for the first book, “What seems the end is only the beginning.” See more
From author, Lucinda Elliot, at her website Sophie De Courcy:
Aridela’s awful sufferings at the hands of Harpalycus have changed her, just as her taking on the responsibilities of a ruler must, and she is gradually 
developing a different perspective from that of the careless worshipper of external beauty we met in the first volume. See more
Reviews at Amazon: read them all
In the Moon of Asterion is RELEASED!
A milestone and personal goal has been reached at last! I’m so happy to announce the digital release of Book Three, In the Moon of Asterion! This book concludes The Bronze Age segment of the series, and kicks off the next set.
In celebration, I’ve set Asterion‘s price at .99 cents, plus I’ve dropped the price of Book One, The Year-god’s Daughter, to .99 cents as well. I invite you to pick up a copy and give the series a read if you like series books. (Links at the bottom of this post.)
I’ll be retreating into my lonely writing garret as I work hard to get Book Four, The Sixth Labyrinth, polished and ready to go. As you might have read here on the site, The Sixth Labyrinth takes a giant leap forward in time and space, to 1870s Scotland. How is it that we can still follow the lives of Aridela, Chrysaleon, Menoetius, and their followers in such a different place and time? Well, you’ll have to read on to find out. An excerpt of the first three chapters has been included at the end of Asterion.
Meanwhile, a short excerpt from In the Moon of Asterion:
Aridela remembered how the guards had struggled to open the heavy oak door, but for her, it moved effortlessly, at the touch of a finger.
“Asterion,” she whispered. The chamber was not so well lit as last time. There was but one lamp now, giving off a faint glow that only intensified the weight of darkness.
Again, she heard rustling beyond her vision. This time, instead of fear, she felt a thrill of anticipation.
The Beast loped into the circle of light. Incredibly huge, he smelled pungent, musky, like the wild aurochs they captured for the ring. He nuzzled the palm of her hand. She stroked his face, clasped his heavy horns, and kissed his forehead, where a gold rosette glowed.
He prodded her with his snout until he had her trapped against the wall of the chamber. There he kept her, between his implacable enormous head and the immovable wall, snuffling at her stomach as though he could smell the baby. He backed up, snorting, swinging his head from side to side. His eyes were white-rimmed; she sensed the danger and covered her abdomen, afraid, but then divine Athene transformed him, and he who pressed against her was a man.
Anything could happen in the place of dreams, where no boundaries existed.
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The Blurb:
There is a beast in the labyrinth… a monster. The people say he is both man and bull; they call him Asterion.
Of all Crete’s citizens, only two dare enter his lair. One bears his child. The other sees the Goddess in his eyes.
Terrifying yet compelling, the beast offers Crete’s only hope for redemption.
In the third installment of The Child of the Erinyes, Queen Aridela sets out to rebuild her devastated country. Will she sacrifice her beloved consort as ancient tradition demands?
Chrysaleon seeks a way to escape his vow of death and subjugate his adopted land. Can he thwart the Goddess and survive?
Menoetius must offer his allegiance. Who will win his loyalty? His brother, or the woman he loves?
The choices these three make have unforeseen, horrific consequences, changing the course of history and propelling Goddess Athene’s triad toward fulfillment of a bold, far-reaching design.
“What seems the end is only the beginning.”
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One of my favorite reader reviews: “The Year God’s Daughter and The Thinara King were page turners but this is where the real fireworks take place!”
Links:
iTunes (Only The Year-god’s Daughter as of now)
(paperback of Asterion will be out in May, 2013)
The Year-god’s Daughter as required reading
The Priest King
An author, once she or he publishes that debut novel, imagines, expects, and hopes for many things. I am no different. Something I never anticipated, however, was becoming a college assignment.
A professor at the university in question happened upon The Year-god’s Daughter. She read it and contacted me to let me know she was assigning it to her spring 2013 semester class. They’ll be writing up essays on the culture and ideologies covered in the book.
She asked me to provide a statement about my research, which I was happy to do and which was fun to write, though it taxed my memory. Eight pages later, I felt like I was back in class myself!
To those students in the class who dislike historical fantasy, love stories, and/or class assignments, I’m sorry you’re being dragged through this, (and I do remember some of my own university assignments…. some better loved than others….)
First and foremost, I sincerely hope the tale is enjoyed!
The Year-god’s Daughter Free on Kindle!
Click on cover
FREE FOR THREE DAYS: MAY 23, 24, AND 25, 2012!
Be sure to check the price before clicking on “purchase.” I’ve done my best to make sure these promotional days are activated, but I have been notified by other authors of problems getting their promo days to actually appear.
Click on the above cover or HERE
FREE FOR THREE DAYS: MAY 23, 24, AND 25, 2012!
Be sure to check the price before clicking on “purchase.” I’ve done my best to make sure these promotional days are activated, but I have been notified by other authors of problems getting their promo days to actually appear.
She of Many Names
Lady of the Beasts
“There was a tendency in Minoan Crete to combine the goddesses into one deity.” Rodney Castleden, The Knossos Labyrinth
Athene is mentioned again and again on the tablets and records from Crete. Her name was spelled “a-ta-na,” and most agree this was an early form of Athene. On at least one tablet, the name “a-ta-na” is combined with “po-ti-ni-ja,” which is thought to be Potnia. Thus in my book, you’ll see the declaration “Potnia Athene,” used several times. It simply meant “Lady,” or “Mistress.”
It’s important to remember when reading The Year-god’s Daughter (and the connecting books, The Thinara King and In the Moon of Asterion,) that what we know about these ancient, pre-Hellenic deities is sparse and fragmented. That Athene existed on Crete and was very important is pretty clear. That there were other goddesses is not so clear; the various names might well have been titles used for different aspects or roles of the same goddess. My story takes place before the familiar pantheon we all know from Classical Greece. Most experts agree that Athene existed long before they did, and that she came from somewhere else, not Greece. So I chose to use Athene almost exclusively, incorporating the various names as alternate names for her. Athene was The Great Goddess, basically, and all these other images or personalities were simply variations of her. Robert Graves also influenced my decision to use Athene this way. In The Greek Myths, he talks again and again about Athene being a pre-Hellenic goddess of vast importance, to whom the sacred kings were sacrificed, and he shares with his readers many of her Names and Titles.
Many mythologists call The Goddess “She of Many Names.” Here are a few titles and names I used in The Child of the Erinyes.
POTNIA: “Mistress,” or “Lady.”
“The Great Goddess or Mother Goddess held sway until the very end of the Minoan civilization and was even for a time in a dominant position in the Mycenean pantheon, until her position was supplanted by Zeus. The Great Goddess seems to have been called Potnia, at least in the final decades of the Labyrinth’s history. The name recurs in place after place, not just on Crete but throughout the Mycenean world. Meaning no more than ‘The Lady’ or ‘The Mistress’, it nevertheless carried powerful connotations and resonances: it was clearly the proper name of an important goddess.” Rodney Castleden, The Knossos Labyrinth
“Potnia had a domestic aspect as a guardian of households and cities. She was the wife and mother, the dependable figure of order and reason. In a sense she represented the conscious mind. Hers, probably, was the double-axe symbol that we find at so many Minoan sanctuaries on Crete, but possibly the pillar and the snake were her symbols too.” Rodney Castleden, The Knossos Labyrinth
BRITOMARTIS: “Lady of the Wild Things.”
“There were wild goddesses too, associated with untamed landscape and consorting with wild beasts. . . . A chaste and free wild goddess, who was a huntress and tamer of wild beasts, is now often referred to as the Mistress of Wild Animals or Queen of Wild Beasts. It seems that the Cretans called her Britomartis, said to mean ‘sweet virgin’, and she became the Artemis or Diana of the classical period.” Rodney Castleden, The Knossos Labyrinth
Eleuthia: Goddess of mothers and childbirth
“She was named in the temple records at Knossos and her nearest sanctuary, the Cave of Eileithyia as it is known today, is at Amnisos. The Cave of Eleuthia was an important centre of worship from neolithic times right through the bronze and iron ages, into the Roman period. It is even mentioned in Homer’s Odyssey, Book 19. Inside the Eleuthia Cave is a natural stalagmite protected by an artificial stone wall, the focus of the cave cult and probably regarded as the manifestation or dwelling of the goddess Eleuthia.
Dictynna: Goddess of fishermen, or “of the net.”
It appears that Dictynna, too, was later merged with Artemis. Imagine how important fishermen were on an island like Crete. It’s not surprising they would have their own special goddess, “She who cast the nets.”
Gorgopis:
“grim faced.” A title of Athene’s, according to Robert Graves. The fearsome aspect, the face of Athene at the moment of death.
Areia:
Meaning unknown, but this was one of Athene’s titles and/or names. If one types “definition of Areia” into Google search, what comes up are several sites describing Athene.
Laphria: “the goat goddess.”
Graves says that this was Athene’s title representing her as a “goat goddess.” He says that the word Laphria suggests that “the goddess was the pursuer, not the pursued.”
Kaphtor (Crete)
Psiloritis
Kaphtor is merely an ancient name for Crete. It comes to us from Egypt mostly.
In his book Unearthing Atlantis, Charles Pellegrino says on page 88:
“When finally the troops entered Canaan, carrying the Ark before them, war broke out almost immediately between the Hebrews and the people they found there. Among those people were the Philistines, whom the Bible tells us came from Caphtor (Crete.) Can it be that the Philistines (Cretan Minoans?) and the armies of Hebrew slaves, having escaped from (or been chased out of) famine-stricken Egypt, were actually two populations of refugees created, in different ways, by the same volcanic catastrophe? Can it be that the present-day conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis has as its roots Thera and the origin of the Atlantis legend?”
In Minoans, Life in Bronze Age Crete, by Rodney Castleden says on page 21:
“A tablet found far away at Mari in Mesopotamia mentions a weapon adorned with lapis lazuli and gold and describes it as ‘Caphtorite.’ The 
Egyptians called Crete ‘Kefti’, ‘Keftiu’ or ‘the land of the Keftiu’, while in the Near East Crete was known as ‘Caphtor’: it is as Caphtor that ancient Crete appears in the Old Testament, ‘Caphtorite’ clearly means Cretan. The similarity of the words ‘Caphtor’, ‘Caphtorite’ and ‘Keftiu’ strongly implies that the Minoans themselves used something like the word ‘Kaftor’ as a name for their homeland.”
on page 37 he says: “There is a tradition that the Philistines originated as Cretans; the Book of Jeremiah (47:4) says, ‘for the Lord will spoil the Philistines, the remnant of the country of Caphtor.’ Caphtor was Crete.”
Iakchos, the great star (Sirius)
Iakchos
From Dionysos (Archetypal Image of Indestructible life), by Carl Kerényi:
page 73, 74: “When in Egypt the early rising of Sirius became the beginning of the year, the approach of a better season could be foreseen by the first swelling of the Nile. Yet this was also the time of the most dangerous heat: a highly ambivalent season! The same was true in Crete and Greece (with the exception that there was no Nile). The heat was obviously evil, and so was the star with whose appearance it began. But in a mysterious way the season was also good. In Greek it was called opora, a word that is not easy to translate because it means not only the season but its fruits as well. Homer knew Sirius as “Orion’s dog.” As Alpha canis it belongs to the great hunter whose gigantic figure had already dominated the heavens for months and would continue to do so for several months more until, stung by the celestial scorpion, it sank below the horizon. The full ambivalence of Sirius is expressed by a metaphor in the twenty-second book of the Iliad. As Achilles ran, “the bronze on his breast flashed out like the star that comes to us in autumn, outshining all its fellows in the evening sky–they call it Orion’s Dog, and though it is the brightest of all stars it bodes no good, bringing much fever, as it does, to us poor wretches.”
page 77: “At Knossos we find the name i-wa-ko, whose Greek reading can be “Iakos,” “Iachos,” or “Iakchos”; at Knossos and Pylos it often takes the form of i-wa-ka. “Iakar,” a name for Sirius that seems utterly alien to the Greek language, may not really have been so foreign. An Egyptian story can be cited in connection with the Minoan names “Iakar” and “Iakchos.” “Iachen” or “Iachim” was the name of a wise and pious man in Egypt who allegedly lived under King Senyes. This man may also have been a divine figure. He was said to have softened the fiery power of Sirius at its early rising and thus to have wiped out the epidemics that raged at that time. After his death he was buried in a temple tomb, and when the appropriate sacrificial rites had been completed the priests took fire from his altar and carried it about, apparently in a magic ritual directed against the destructive fire of the star.
Through Dionysos this fire was transformed into the “pure light of high summer.”
From The Myth of the Goddess (Evolution of an Image), by Anne Baring and Jules Cashford:
page 119: “The Cretan New Year began at the summer solstice, when the heat was at its greatest, and 20 July was the day when the great star Sirius rose in conjunction with the sun, as it did also in Sumeria and Egypt. In these two other countries Sirius was explicitly the star of the goddess (Inanna in Sumeria, and Isis in Egypt), and Minoan temple-palaces in Crete were orientated to this star. The rising of Sirius ended a forty-day ritual during which honey was gathered from the hives of the bees in the darkness of the caves and the woods. The honey was then fermented into mead and drunk as an intoxicating liquor, accompanying the ecstatic rites that may have celebrated the return of the daughter of the goddess as the beginning of the new year–as, perhaps, in the seal of the double axe. All these rites are present in the Classical Greek myths of Dionysos, himself originating in Crete and called the Bull God. A bull was sacrificed with the rising of the star Sirius, and the bees were seen as the resurrected form of the dead bull and also as the souls of the dead.”
Iphiboë, Aridela’s sister
Iphiboë is the queen of Crete’s oldest daughter, and heir to that magnificent throne.
Too bad she’s so timid. A shame she’s so afraid of men, of sex.
The vast majority of Crete’s populace believes poor Iphiboë will fail as queen. They believe she’ll be the downfall of their rich, prosperous civilization. If only Aridela were the oldest, is a thought that runs through a thousand minds a day.
Her name means Strength of Oxen. Her father was Valos, who accepted his three golden apples and walked accepting to his own death.
No one knows Iphiboë like Aridela. But not even Aridela knows the full truth of her sister. The nightmares that have plagued her. The premonitions she’s seen. The future she’s endured, night after night in her dreams.
Anne Hathaway, representing Iphiboë
Helice, queen of Crete (Kaphtor)
Clytemnestra, by John Collier
In her heyday, Helice commanded respect and awe to an extent almost level with that of the Pharaoh of Egypt. In fact, she calls Pharaoh her friend, along with other rulers, kings, queens, and leaders, including the arrogant Idómeneus, king of Mycenae, father to both Chrysaleon and Menoetius.
But now her health is failing. Still a young woman by today’s standards, she is wasting away with some unknown disease. Her royal healer cannot find the proper combination of herbs or concoctions to reverse the problem.
Helice, ever the pragmatist, decides to put her eldest daughter on the throne. Iphiboë will step up before Helice becomes too weak to help her.
Queen Helice refuses to accept what everyone else knows. Iphiboë doesn’t possess the strength of will to rule as queen over this powerful society.
The mainland kingdoms sense this as well.
Selene, princess of Phrygia
Selene, creamy-haired daughter to a queen in the faraway land of Phrygia, is given to the queen of Crete as a mentor and teacher for Iphiboë.
She initially dismisses Aridela as “too small and fragile” to be trained; besides, Aridela is destined to live out her life with the priestesses, and will have little need of military skills. Aridela’s tenacity soon changes her mind, however, and she ends up taking both girls under her wing. The three become inseparable, which is a very good thing, as Athene has a far more important role in mind for the Amazon warrior from Phrygia.
Selene is intensely loyal to Aridela. She has always struck me as a kind of “Samwise Gamgee” character. She never falters. She never thinks twice, or puts her needs above her queen’s. She will die, willingly, for the sake of those she loves.
After many years of holding herself apart from men, she does fall in love. And this is what, finally, could change her other, long-cherished relationships. Who will she end up giving her trust to? Who will receive her ultimate loyalty?
Selene
