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A review by zurpel
The Firebrand by Marion Zimmer Bradley
4.0
I’ve already read quite a few books by Marion Zimmer Bradley, including most of the Avalon and Darkover series. I always liked her writing style and how she manages to tell a vivid, historical believable and deep story.
I wasn’t disappointed with The Firebrand. The book is a retelling of the fall of Troy, told from Kassandra’s point of view. Kassandra is a princess of Troy. When she was still a child, she was claimed both by the Goddess and by Apollo. She spent some time in her youth among the Amazon tribes and learned to fight. Later she became a priestess to Apollo. Since her early childhood she had visions of what was to come and was doomed not to be believed.
There are always to kinds of historical books for me: Those that get boring soon because they either lack in detail and are unbelievable or because they lose themselves in detail so the story itself drowns in it. And there are those stories that are brilliant, captivating narratives that make history real. The Firebrand belongs to that second category. The story at once made me feel like I know the time. There was not too much description but also enough to paint a vivid picture of the time and place. It’s easy to sympathize with Kassandra and although I often get easily bored by long travels in books or battles, I didn’t get bored in The Firebrand (there were both travels and battles).
In-between the story itself Kassandra asks herself some thought-provoking questions about the gods that are worshiped in different parts of her world and about the standing of women in society.
The only reason it took me so long to finish this book was the simple fact that my edition had a very small font size, so I couldn’t read much of it in the evenings and I sometimes had to squeeze in a book with larger font so my eyes wouldn’t protest too much (this is one of the reasons why I love my e-readers so much; always the perfect font size).
I wasn’t disappointed with The Firebrand. The book is a retelling of the fall of Troy, told from Kassandra’s point of view. Kassandra is a princess of Troy. When she was still a child, she was claimed both by the Goddess and by Apollo. She spent some time in her youth among the Amazon tribes and learned to fight. Later she became a priestess to Apollo. Since her early childhood she had visions of what was to come and was doomed not to be believed.
There are always to kinds of historical books for me: Those that get boring soon because they either lack in detail and are unbelievable or because they lose themselves in detail so the story itself drowns in it. And there are those stories that are brilliant, captivating narratives that make history real. The Firebrand belongs to that second category. The story at once made me feel like I know the time. There was not too much description but also enough to paint a vivid picture of the time and place. It’s easy to sympathize with Kassandra and although I often get easily bored by long travels in books or battles, I didn’t get bored in The Firebrand (there were both travels and battles).
In-between the story itself Kassandra asks herself some thought-provoking questions about the gods that are worshiped in different parts of her world and about the standing of women in society.
The only reason it took me so long to finish this book was the simple fact that my edition had a very small font size, so I couldn’t read much of it in the evenings and I sometimes had to squeeze in a book with larger font so my eyes wouldn’t protest too much (this is one of the reasons why I love my e-readers so much; always the perfect font size).