The Sacred Land (Hellenistic Seafaring Adventure)

By H.N. Turteltaub

Book Overview

In "Over the Wine-Dark Sea "and "The Gryphon's Skull," H. N. Turteltaub brought to life the teeming world of maritime Greece, in the unsettled years following the death of Alexander the Great. Now Menedemos and Sostratos, those dauntless capitalists of the third century B.C., have set sail again--this time to Phoenicia. There Menedemos will spend the summer trading, while his cousin Sostratos travels inland to the little-known country of Ioudaia, with its strange people and their even stranger religious obsessions. In theory, Sostratos is going in search of cheap balsam, a perfume much in demand in the Mediterranean world. In truth, scholarly Sostratos just wants to get a good look at a part of the world unknown to most Hellenes. And the last thing he wants is to have to take along a bunch of sailors from the "Aphrodite "as his bodyguards. But Menedemos insists. He knows that bandits on land are as dangerous as pirates at sea, and he has no faith in Sostratos' ability to dodge them. Meanwhile, it turns out that the prime hams and smoked eels they picked up en route are unsalable to Ioudaians. (Who knew?) And worst of all, Sostratos' new brother-in-law has managed to talk their fathers into loading the "Aphrodite "with hundreds of amphorae of his best olive oil--when they're trading in a region that has no shortage of it. It's a hard day's work, hustling for an honest drachma.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0765300370
• ISBN13: 9780765300379
• Release Date: December 2003
• Publisher: Forge
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 1.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.5" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

A must read

Truly excellent historical fiction. Accurate to the last, small detail making the series so fun to read.

Better and better:

This series just gets better and better! It's the thinking person's historical adventure. The characters are very human -- but not just modern people in chitons. And the settings...wow!

A benchmark book for historical fiction

I was introduced to historical fiction through the works of Mary Renault who I discovered in my teenage years, the 1950's. The first alternate world science fiction story I can remember reading was "Bring the Jubilee" by Ward Moore. I don't believe that there has been a work of classically themed historical fiction or of hard science alternate world science fiction that I haven't read during the last 50 years.Up until "The Gryphon's Skull," the immediate predecessor to"The Sacred Land" I felt that Harry Turtledove (Turtletaub) was a prolific adventure wtiter whose books were hard to put down but were a bit light on characterization. The bulk of his output has been alternate world hard science science fiction themed on the American Civil War and its aftermath and on World Wars I and II. His characters in these books always interact with "famous" people, so that it becomes difficult to really know them, and, to be honest, "Gettysburg" co-authored by Newt Gingrich is a far better written book than all of Turtledove's alternate history Civil war novels put together.However, first in "The Gryphon's Skull," and now in "The sacred Land" Turtledove has set a standard for other writers of classically themed historical novels to emulate. Rather than play off of a larger theme that he did not create, such as the American wars, Turtledove has re-created for us the merchant trading world of just-post Alexander's Magna Graecia. The development of the main characters in the two novels is complex and wonderful. I couldn't wait for the book's story to get to fourth century BC Jerusalem after beginning in Rhodes and including sojourns on Cyprus and in Sidon. I was fascinated by the people of Phoenicia and Judea as seen through the eyes of the Hellenes.Please continue the adventures of Menedemos and his cousin Sosistratos, Mr. Turtledove, I can't wait for the next book!

EACH BOOK BETTER THAN THE LAST

This is the third of what I understand is a projected seven book series on two cousins from Rhodes who sale the seas as merhcantmen around 300 B.C. Each book is better than the last and as the cousins grow and mature with each adventure so does our fondness for them.