Looking For a Book About..: Minoans and Scythians

[Laura]

Scythian books are hard to find. Offhand, I know only of only one that deals at all with the culture, and that's The Horse Goddess by Morgan Llewellyn.

I'd help you with the Minoans, but I can't post a link to any list because my own work is on it, and I think that's against group rules.

[Jane]

This one on Minoans was not bad: At the Palaces of Knossos by Nikos Kazantzakis: one of his minor works.

[Darcy]

Laura wrote: "Scythian books are hard to find. Offhand, I know only of only one that deals at all with the culture, and that's The Horse Goddess by Morgan Llewellyn.

I'd help you with the Minoans..."

I just want to add the caveat that The Horse Goddess is not, strictly speaking, an historical fiction; there are some elements that people consider fantasy.

You can link your own if it's appropriate to the conversation, provided it's a suggestion and not not used as marketing.

[Laura]

The King Must Die by Mary Renault
Cavanila's Choices: A Novel of the Minoan Cataclysm by Jesse Sisken
Knossos by Laura Gill
The Year-God's Daughter by Rebecca Lochlann
Ariadne: A Novel of Ancient Crete by June Rachuy Brindel

There may be more. I'll have to check my lists.

[Sherry]

I would also add Mary Renault's The Bull from the Sea.

[C.P.]

Horses of Heaven (Saka is another name for Scythians) and Island of Ghosts (Sarmatians—not Scythians, but a related people living in the same area at a different time, here dispatched to the British Isles, of all places), both by Gillian Bradshaw.

I haven't read them, but I hear good things about Bradshaw.

Also, Last of the Amazons by Steven Pressfield. Many people think the Amazons were in fact Scythian women warriors, turned into legends by Herodotus.

[Laura]

Sherry wrote: "I would also add Mary Renault's The Bull from the Sea."

Bull From The Sea takes place in Mycenaean Athens, not Minoan Crete. Only the first book covers Crete.

[Sandra]

The books by Gillian Bradshaw are outstanding! Probably among her best (I think I've read all of hers but the most recent two.)

Also, I thought it should be noted, The Horse Goddess, while an excellent read, tells the Scythian culture from the POV of a feminist Celtic woman. There are no POV characters who are Scythian, although the leading man, who is Scythian, is very well done, IMHO.

[Darcy]

The Horse Goddess