Queen of the Amazons »

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.

Judith Tarr returns to the always fascinating character of Alexander the Great in this fantasy novel that springs from the legend that the Queen of the Amazons came to meet him in Persia, and became his friend.

Hippolyta was Penthesilea, or Queen of the Amazons. She ruled as war leader and high priestess of a scattered tribe of women warriors who had dwelt on the high plains to the north and east of Persia for time out of mind. They were not isolated—-travelers came and went through their territory, bringing news from the west, and carrying tales of the warrior women back home with them.

But the Queen had a great grief in her life: her daughter and heir was a strange child. The girl had been born, so the Priestesses said, without a soul. And it was true that she was like no other child alive. She did not speak, and often seemed not to even see the people around her. She could not dress or feed herself, but she could ride and hunt like no other woman of the tribe. Many of the Amazons believed that the child must never be Queen, but that was a problem for a later time—Hippolyta was young and strong.

Selene, the niece of the tribe's Seer, was put in charge of the child, to be her nursemaid and guardian. And it was a good, though sometimes difficult, life for many turns of the years. But then one day news came from the West of a new Conqueror, a young man who came out of Macedon with a spirit like flame, intending to rule the whole world. The Queen's daughter responded to the tale as a woman in the desert would to the sound of falling water. That very night she stole out of the camp and rode west. Selene could not stop her, and so she must follow, praying that the Queen would understand. Hippolyta herself followed the next day, and so they rode together, controlled by the child's compulsion, until they had crossed the mountains and entered into Alexander's Empire, and under the sway of Alexander's powerful personality.

Publishers Weekly

In her latest stirring historical fantasy, Tarr (Pride of Kings, etc.) explores the tantalizing relationship between the macho Alexander the Great, hero of her 1993 novel, Lord of the Two Lands, and Hippolyta, the sensuous queen of the Amazons. When Hippolyta, ruler of the fabled female warriors of Greek lore, gives birth to her firstborn, the baby girl is soulless. The Amazon clan's children call the beautiful but empty infant "Etta" ("that thing"), because she can't be officially named until she has a soul. Hippolyta believes one will eventually possess her child's body and declares Etta royal heiress, outraging some of the tribe, especially her jealous cousin, Phaedra, who vows vengeance when she is exiled. The arrival of Alexander of Macedon in Persia leads Hippolyta, driven by the Goddess, to challenge him to a fateful fight that leaves her daughter in Alexander's world but with a higher destiny still in the cards. The soul that Etta receives through a magical transference after she grows to adulthood is unlikely to come as a surprise ("The soul has no gender"), though it provides a cool twist on the classical legend. Tarr's fluid plotting and careful research will keep readers intrigued despite her deceptively simplistic and, at times, workmanlike prose. (Mar. 11) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.