God's Concubine
Tor Books
Science Fiction / Fantasy
February 1, 2004
ISBN-13: 0765305410
Available in: Hardcover
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God's Concubine
by Sara Douglass
From ancient Greece they came, remnants of the glorious Trojans. Led by Brutus, Kingman, holder of the bands of gold that wield the very magic of the Gods, these travelers are bowed but not broken, and they have come to Albion to begin anew. A vision of beauty called them to create a new Troy, and when they landed on the shores of the land that became Britain, they found an old magic that was fading. And so they began to construct a new Labyrinth, a place of magic that will bring unimaginable power to those who can control it.
The temptress who brought Brutus to this land seeks to use him for her own purposes, but in that she fails, for it is the bride of Brutus who dooms the completion of the labyrinth . . . and sends all the players in this drama--- handsome Brutus, his beautiful wife, Cornelia, and the sensuous and deadly Genvissa---into a hell of death and rebirth, until the Labyrinth is completed and the ancient magic is set free.
A thousand years pass. Cathedrals rise in place of mud and wattle huts, hymns to saints replace odes to Celtic and Greek gods. But the magic from the dawn of time waits, and the players are not yet done with their destinies. They have new faces and new bodies, but old souls---and not all who have come back remember their parts in this drama. There are kings and princes, deadly court intrigues, and ancient powers awoken.
And a warrior across the sea who only waits for his opportunity to finish what was started centuries before . . .
Other Books by Sara Douglass
Sara Douglass' Bio
I can't remember learning to read, or picking up my first book. I have always read, and I have always loved books. I was born on a small farm some twenty-five miles out of Penola in South Australia. It was called Gundealga, 'peaceful watering hole', and its names, and its woods and deer, are remembered in The Axis Trilogy. The farm had no electricity, so I remember reading my first books by the gentle glow of kerosene lamps, hiding behind the living room couch so my parents would think me already in bed.
When I was about seven we moved to Adelaide, and somehow the household books bred in the process. I remember my father nonchalantly propping up a bucket to catch the drips from a leaking roof with seventeenth-century volumes that he said were so mouldy anyway they wouldn't mind a bit of extra dampness (I was horrified. I rescued them and carefully dried them out and now they rest, splotched and blotched but still readable, on the mantelpiece above the fire in my writing room).
I started writing as soon as I felt competent, about nine or ten, and my teachers and parents regarded me indulgently, as if to say, "She'll grow out of it". But I didn't. I kept writing. When I was about fourteen I received second prize in a nation wide essay competition. When I left school my writing ceased for some six to seven years as I got involved in the world -- My first career was as a nurse.
An escape finally presented itself when I applied to do a Bachelor of Arts at Adelaide University. Suddenly I found myself back in a world that encouraged creative thinking and processes. I was enthralled. I started writing again by keeping a detailed diary. I found myself a new career as an academic, teaching medieval history at La Trobe University, Bendigo. This new job I found incredibly stressful, and so, just for myself, no-one else, I began to write in the evening and weekends. I loved it! Writing became for me the perfect way to relax and escape the stressful world of academia.
I never thought of writing fantasy until one day ... one day when I just sat down and started writing BattleAxe. I knew almost immediately that this was going to be my best chance at getting published. I wrote virtually the entire trilogy, thought about it, and then sent BattleAxe off one day to an agent.
I knew that I would have my best chance with an agent. I picked up the Melbourne Yellow Pages, and looked under agents. — Australian Literary Management was picked because they had the magical word 'literary' in their name. And so off it went and here I am, all due to the intervention of a tiny iron axe that gave me the idea for BattleAxe and the help of the Melbourne Yellow Pages.