The Shepherd Kings Book

In a novel of fiery passions and great deeds, where the power of the gods reaches out to touch the lives of mortal men and women, Judith Tarr spins a sweeping saga of war and romance set in one of the most mysterious times in history. The Kingdom of Lower Egypt has been occupied for a hundred years by the Shepherd Kings, the Hyksos, conquerors from the East who came with horses and dreadful war chariots to crush the foot soldiers of Pharaoh. All of Lower Egypt is occupied by foreign lords, including the ancient household of the Sun Ascendant, where a young woman named Iry was once the lady of the holding and is now a slave. But there is a change in the wind--the holding has passed to a new Hyksos lord by a woman of a Far Eastern tribe, a Priestess of Horse Goddess, and with him comes the living incarnation of the Goddess, the White Mare. The Mare has driven her people to Egypt in the wake of the foreign kings and, to the horror of the invaders, chooses an Egyptian slave to be her Servant and Chief Priestess. And now the Pharaoh Ahmose, who still rules the Upper Kingdom, will move to take back the Lower Kingdom by making a twofold alliance: with the seafaring empire of Crete and with Horse Goddess herself. The Shepherd Kings is a novel of great passions and power, as the story moves from the ancient kingdom on the Nile to the sea-bound fastness of Minoan Crete; from Iry's tempestuous relationship with the man who was once her master and is now her servant to her cousin Kemni's passionate romance with a Minoan priestess; and from the council rooms of kings to the battlefields of the war that will wrest Egypt from the hands of the invaders. Read More