Synopses & Reviews
The Kingdom of Lower Egypt has been occupied for a hundred years by the Shepherd Kings, the Hyksos, conquerors from the East who came with horses and dreadful war chariots to crush the foot soldiers of Pharoah. All of Lower Egypt is occupied by foreign lords, including the ancient household of The Sun Ascendant, where a young woman named Iry was once the lady of the holding and is now a slave.
But there is a change in the wind-the holding has passed to the son of a woman of a Far-Eastern tribe, a Priestess of Horse Goddess, and with him comes the living incarnation of the Goddess, the White Mare. The Mare has driven her people to Egypt in the wake of the foreign kings and, to the horror of the invaders, chooses Iry to be her Servant and Chief Priestess.
And now the Pharoah Ahmose, who still rules the Upper Kingdom, will move to take back the Lower Kingdom by making a two-fold alliance: with the seafaring empire of Crete, and with Horse Goddess herself.
Review
"
The Shepherd Kings has more excitement, color and spectacle, undiluted sex, intrigue, and adventure than one ordinarily finds in several novels by less talented storytellers."-
The Washington Post"Tarr steps back in time to a realm of goddess worship reminiscent of the setting of Marion Zimmer Bradley's Mists of Avalon." -Booklist
About the Author
Judith Tarr is the author of more than twenty widely praised novels, including
The Throne of Isis, White Mare's Daughter, and
Queen of Swords, as well as five previous volumes in the Avaryan Chronicles:
The Hall of the Mountain King, The Lady of Han-Gilen and A Fall of Princes (collected in one volume as Avaryan Rising),
Arrows of the Sun, and
Spear of Heaven. A graduate of Yale and Cambridge University, Judith Tarr holds degrees in ancient and medieval history, and breeds Lipizzan horses at Dancing Horse Farm, her home in Vail, Arizona.