The Firebrand
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 w