With Wolfe, I definately want to reread the existing two books before the third book comes out this fall. He is a complex and many layered writer.
For example:
When Latro meets the gods ---
a. does he really meet them, as someone in Greek myth would?
b. is it all a delusion of his hurt brain?
c. is it all some sort of dream or alternate reality? (I find myself asking that with every Wolfe book I have thus far read ).
I haven't had much time, as I have been out of town for a couple of days, but I have gone on to read the next three chapters.
chapter two: At Hill
I wish Wolfe would identify his city states by the names we call them. While his method adds to the mistiness of the story, in my mind I always call the places Sparta and Athens. And would Hill be Grecian (as opposed to Egyptian) Thebes?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thebes,_Greece
Anyway, Latro and his unnamed black friend have come with the Persian army to the city Latro calls Hill. They have no money, so the friend streals some food for them. Latro sees a statue of a water god in a fountain and gets very excited, having read about his meeting with such a god in his scroll. The towns people get excited in turn and have Latro taken to the temple of the god Apollo.
At the temple, Latro meets some people who will become very important to him, especially a little slave girl. the priestess makes prophecies over him. And he meets the great god Apollo himself, who comes to him as a golden giant (which makes sense, as Apollo is the god of the sun among many other things). Apollo speaks a prophecy to him, and tells Latro that even though healing is one of his attributes, he cannot heal him, as the injury is due to the Great Mother goddess.
images of Apollo:
atheism.about.com/library/FAQs/religion/blgrk_apollo.htm
chapter 3 : Io
In the third chapter Latro meets the little slave girl who we first met in Apollo's temple in Thebes. Her name is Io. He also meets a poet that Thebes sends with him on his quest for healing, named Pindaros. The three speak of the prophecies the priestess told about Latro the day before.
Then a group of maenids come by. These are people who dance naked, drink wine, and celebrate Dionysus, god of wine. In some legends they also become so wild they rip men apart with their bare hands. Luckily for Latro, these seem to be a gentler sort.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionysus
chapter four: Awakened by Moonlight
Latro awakens naked, snuggled up with a naked woman. He is ashamed by his perfectly natural reaction to that.
He walks out into the lake and then sees Artemis, twin sister to Apollo, and goddess of the moon as her brother is a god of the sun.
He talks for awhile with the priest of Dionysus, who teaches Io about the god he serves.
The woman he woke up next to is a beauty named Hilaeira. Pindaros tells her and the priest that their party is on their way to the shrine of the Great Mother at Lebadeia in answer to the prophecy at Apollo's temple.
Artemis:
www.pantheon.org/articles/a/artemis.html ******************************************************
Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
<i>Edited by: Duchess of Malfi at: 8/21/06 9:11 am
</i>
Login
FAQ
