Korinna - Daughters of the Fire, I — Kristina O'Donnelly

With the audience appeal of The Grass Crown by Colleen McCullough and The Last King by Michael Curtis Ford, Korinna - Daughters of the Fire, I, is an intense tour-de-force into the history of Ancient Greece, Rome, Anatolia, and the plight of women in those times. Women who had no say in the running of their own lives, and women who only lived for their men who were then slain in battle. Locale and Time: Korinna, Daughters of the Fire, I, begins during the first of the three Mithriadic Wars fought between the Kingdom of Pontus and the Republic of Rome for control of Anatolia/Asia Minor, from 89 B.C. onward. Ephesus, Sardis and Pergamum, three famous cities of Antiquity, provide the stage upon which the novel revolves. By Roman times, the matriarchal religion of Anatolia had changed, though the female principle was still dominant. The original mother-fertility goddesses were now identified with the love goddesses of Greece and Rome, Aphrodite and Venus. Korinna, an orphan novice of Artemis, and the Holy Women (priestess-prostitutes of Aphrodite) Melitta and Chrysanthe, born during a time of chaotic transition in Anatolian history that pitted not only nation against nation, but parent against child, were truly Daughters of the Fire that had swept this ancient land.