A historically-based novel with authentic, legendary, & fictional characters interacting across the extraordinary panorama of the Bronze Age Collapse in the Hittite Empire between the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean seas. Diomedes, previously a hero of the Trojan War, joins the polyglot Peoples of the Sea to raid inland into the Hittite Empire during its final months. It is both a study of ancient mythic consciousness and an exciting adventure of love, archetypal journeys, character transformation, destruction, desperate survival, and the lived mystery of pagan rituals. It was a time of such chaos, that royalty was overthrown, palaces and temples were burnt, and the power of the gods was thrown into doubt, yet the ancient Great Goddess of the Cosmic Round, who had been suppressed, began to regain her former dominance. With the fall of the gods, the human psyche was radically altered. Diomedes, though prominent in Homer's Iliad-a warrior the equal of Hektor or Akhilleus, a thinker as cunning as Odysseus and as wise as Nestor, and the only man who dared wound gods-has seldom, if ever, been the chief protagonist in literature. He is given his due within. His own wandering adventures and suffering after the destruction of Ilios are traced as far north as Kolkhis (Colchis) in the Black Sea, through involvement with the last Hittite royal family in Anatolia, and as far south as Alasiya (Cyprus) in the Mediterranean. He ascends the heights of glory but also must descend into the dark Underworld in an attempt to save the one he loves. The Bronze Age Collapse was brought about by similar issues to those we face today-massive climate change, the control of wealth by power elites, runaway migrations, and wars of conquest.
