The Firebrand

About this book

In The Firebrand, Marion Zimmer Bradley, author of The Mists of Avalon, has re-imagined the story of the Trojan War--and retells it from the point of view of Kassandra, the beautiful and tormented royal princess of Troy. In her brilliant re-creation of the famous legend, the fall of Troy unfolds in a new and daring way, from the judgement of Paris, the abduction of Helen (here, not the wicked adulteress of legend, but a warm and loving woman, devoted to Paris and their children) and the summoning of the Greek armies by Agamemnon, Helen's enraged brother-in-law, to the final tragedy of the city's destruction, fated by the gods--and by the willful pride of its male leaders. The heroine of this epic tale is Kassandra, and the novel's powerful tension comes as much from her internal struggle with her own divided loyalties (for her loyalty to her father, the King, and her brothers is counterposed against her growing allegiance to the older faith of matriarchy and Earth Mother) as from the bitter conflict between Trojan and Greek, in which she hauntingly forsees everything she holds dear destroyed--gifted, or cursed, as she is with the power of prophecy. The novel begins with Kassandra's birth, as a twin. Her brother, Paris, is fostered by a family of shepherds, because of a prophecy that twins bring bad luck, and she grows up unaware that Paris even exists--except for the inexplicable visions in which she sees events through his eyes... Her mother, Queen Hecuba, was an Amazon, a woman, a warrior, before her marriage, and as Kassandra is about to become a woman, she is sent to spend a year with the Amazon tribes, where she learns of the powers of women before they were subjugated by the new wave of patriarchy. On her return to Troy, Kassandra dedicates herself to becoming a priestess of Apollo, the sun god; but within her there grows a powerful and disturbing conflict between the "old ways," in which women ruled and religion came from the Earth Mother, and the new world of male gods and male kinds--a world which is characterized by the senseless quarrels and bloodlust that lead to the siege of her beloved city. Blending archeological fact and legend, the myths of the gods and the feats of heroes, fact and fiction, Marion Zimmer Bradley breathes new life into a classic tale, re-inventing for us Achilles, Aeneas, Hector, Patroclus, Helen of Troy, Odysseus, Agamemnon, Menelaus, as living people, engaged in a desperate struggle that dooms both the victors and the vanquished, their fate seen through the eyes of Kassandra, priestess, princess, and passionate woman with the spirit of a warrior. The Firebrand is Marion Zimmer Bradley's finest work to date.