After the decades-long assault by despotic Persia on the allied Greek states, the Greeks finally defeated their massive enemy. Now, in the ancient Mediterranean world of Life After Death at Ipsambul, war is imminent among the Greeks. Arion, the only child of a wealthy mercantile family on idyllic Lesbos, had the education and security to evolve into a poetic soul. As a boy growing into a man, he is thrust into a violent world while his unscrupulous uncle is running the family estate. To survive, he must adjust and overcome injustice and cruelty. This novel comprises Arion's experiences: while traveling to Sidon from Damaskos as a child with his father; departing from Mytilene on Lesbos to sail south on the Aegean Sea as a juvenile; traveling up the Nile to Ipsambul; then returning to Greece as a young adult, and at last arriving in glorious Athens (during the Age of Perikles) two years before the beginning of the Peloponnesian War. On his journey, he finds that the surprising puzzle of life allows romance and religion only in portions of reality, hope, and fantasy. The novel spans twelve years, ending in 433 BC.
To assist potential readers in making good choices about whether or not to purchase any of the four volumes of Arion's Odyssey, I offer the following additional information about this tetralogy, which is set in Classical Greece, with the city-state (polis) of Athens as one protagonist and Arion (a human) as the other.
Each volume of Arion's Odyssey is a combination of historical novel, ancient travelogue, ancient poetry, mythology, religion, and history. If you would enjoy a saga as detailed as Melville's Moby-Dick, as kaleidoscopic as Michener's Iberia, and as expansive as Hugo's Les Miserable, you might love this tetralogy.
Regarding Athens and its empire, the following portion of each novel is similar to an ancient travelogue: one third of Life After Death at Ipsambul (volume 1); one fifth of Aegean Fire (volume 2); one tenth of Beyond the Battle of Naupaktos (volume 3); one tenth of Return to Lesbos (volume 4).
Set in the ancient Mediterranean world, Arion's Odyssey is an adult story about Arion, a sensitive Greek (boy becoming a man) from a wealthy mercantile family on the Greek island of Lesbos. It begins fourteen years prior to the inception of the Peloponnesian War, and ends during that war: it spans the period from 445 BC to 427 BC.
If you would like to experience life in the ancient Mediterranean world, then you will probably enjoy this adult story about coming-of-age there.
