ANDREA ATZORI (tr. Nigel Ross)
Acheron Books
$2.99 Kindle edition, available now
Rating: 4* of five
The Publisher Says: The year is 1278 B.C. and the Mediterranean Sea is shared among the most powerful civilizations of ancient times. Greeks, Egyptians, and Phoenicians sail from port to port, ready to fight to protect their trade from the "Sea People," marauders who loot and disappear like ghosts. Among them are the fierce Shardan, who come from the "Island of Towers," from fortresses of basalt stone called nuraghes. These rise up all over the Shardan's land and, since the dawn of time, hide a curse feared by the people of the Mediterranean: the Island is the gateway to the netherworld. The Shardan live as hell-keepers, offering their loot to the Gods who protect their position. Now they are in Egypt, ready to wage war against the pharaohs when a messenger arrives from the netherworld with a warning: the Mamuthone demons have awakened.
My Review: You've heard tell of the Bronze Age collapse...the thing that probably triggered the historical Trojan War, caused Minoan, Mycenaean, and Hittite states to collapse, rocked the New Kingdom in Egypt to its core, and was blamed by them on the SRDN, the WSHSH, and a bunch of other "Sea Peoples." Oh, sure you have, the History Channel's made like a zillion documentaries about it! Eric Cline was all over YouTube after his book 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed came out in 2014.
No? Well, good lord, go read or at least watch that amazing story, and then you'll appreciate the opportunity this represents to a fiction writer.
Author Atzori, a Sardinian by birth, decided that his native island's Nuragic civilization was the "Shardan" of the Egyptian stelae complaining about the Sea Peoples. He flew that flag high and proud in this terrific dark fantasy.
The fall of the very interdependent, highly globalized world led to a Dark Age, one without writing or advanced technology...let's be clear, this is a *relative* term, no there have not been computer-using nuclear-armed civilizations before now!...that lasted four hundred years. The myth-making that led to Homer's long-ass poems and the Jewish Torah and so on and so forth are used here as grist for a supernatural explanation for the collapse.
The monstrous Old Ones awake!
Karnak, our PoV character, is in Egypt to extract tribute for the Mamuthone (demons his homeland, Sardinia, has the "honor" of keeping bottled up) when he gets the word that, well, it's too late. And then the loud pedal goes down, the battles begin to spread from all sides to all points, the world's on fire!
We're not going to do any good recounting the Collapse. Either you know and it doesn't matter what I say, or you don't and should get yourself to a bookery to find out about this shocking, amazing event in human history. What matters here is what kind of read this book is: Good. Quite good. A bit underdeveloped in character terms, but I don't think they're so attenuated as to be uninvolving.
You're going to experience a battle-heavy, demon-fighting, very visual tale of what I suspect was the model for the Biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah. The battle of Troy...Wilusa as it was known in this era...and the Olympian battles against the Titans, the Philistines battling Saul...all are echoes of this Collapse, and the story here makes the entire period a background for the eternal battle of good and evil. Karnak is a stand-up guy, but very ready to resort to violence.
But trust me, if you like the Antique epics, this story will make your taste for them purr.
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