Medusa's Shame - The Sacred Throne Series Book 1 by Robert Southworth - A Review

 

The Classical gods are fickle entities; divine beings yet all too easily driven by the human traits of jealousy, lust and vengeance. The inhabitants of Olympus demand their worship and adoration from mortals, yet all too often see humanity as nothing but mere pawns to play against one another, regardless of the resultant tragedy, and so the story unfolds …

Among the hotchpotch of Bronze Age Greek city states stands the kingdom of Mycenae.  Its king, Atreus, wears the crown upon a troubled brow; his brother Thyestes coverts the throne and moves against him in the shadows. Through treachery Thyestes takes the city and throne, killing Atreus. The usurper would have killed the princes Menelaus and Agamemnon as well, were it not for Atreus’ trusted general Pallas leading his charges out of the city.

Hunted, and fearing for their lives, the princes are met by a mysterious hooded figure, who seems to possess uncanny abilities. Calling himself Thanatos, their guide leads the fugitives through a maze of mines to seek exile aboard waiting vessels on the coast. After a frustrating failure to seek refuge from King Priam of Troy, an embittered and vengeful Agamemnon joins his brother Menelaus in Sparta, where they are adopted by the aged king Tyndareus. Knowing that Agamemnon seeks revenge against Thyestes and to regain the throne of Mycenae, King Tyndareus names Menelaus as his heir. Both princes marry daughters of Tyndarereus, Agamemnon to Clytemnestra, while Menelaus has a somewhat difficult marriage to Helen, soured early on in their relationship by Helen’s youthful impropriety.

King Thyestes of Mycenae, would seek the deaths of his nephews and increase his wealth and power in the process. He builds an alliance with neighbouring states, built upon threats and coercion, to conquer Sparta...

Robert Southworth is an accomplished author of historical fiction, known for his works on Spartacus and Jack the Ripper (See my review of The Ripper Legacies Here) . In his unfolding Sacred Throne series, while reinterpreting the world of the Illiad, he is able to cut loose from the boundaries of historical fiction and introduce the fantastical. It’s a freedom to be enjoyed and have fun with, and the author's enjoyment shows in Mr Southworth’s wonderful tale.

In this world the gods and demi-gods walk among us. Centaurs haunt the woods on the edge of civilisation and monsters can be summoned from the underworld and Tartarus by those with the power to do so.

The characters come to the fore, the wise Menelaus, the brutal Agamemnon (one would not want him as an enemy), the cruel  and despotic Thysetes, the peaceable Centaur Airlea,  and the manipulative puppet master that is Thanatos; bending all to his will, sometimes subtlety, but all too often not! The author weaves the threads of his characters with a rare skill, brutal and bloody and yet also humorous at times, creating a rich and colourful tapestry in the reader's imagination.

It’s always a good measure of a book when the reader positively devours the imagery and tale, even more so when the eureka-like ending leaves the reader desperate to continue the story, as pieces tumble into place. Medusa’s Shame is such a book. Bravo Mr Southworth, this reader eagerly awaits book 2!

Medusa's Shame is available as kindle and paperback at Amazon

You can view all of Robert Southworth's work and enjoy his regular blog pieces at Robert Southworth-author.com/home

Future Humans

 It was during the period of the C20th and C21st that persistent reports of sightings of the UFO phenomena entered the sphere of public knowledge. The development of mass media communication brought such reports into the mainstream, albeit being a fringe interest at the time. Such reports were treated as far-fetched, especially those involving actual physical encounters. However certain aspects of these sightings exhibited a number of consistent aspects, namely the so-called saucer shape to these extraterrestrial vehicles and the description of the vehicle of their occupants; the “grey alien” trope. 

It was following the end of the major global conflict of 1939-45, and the paranoia of the following cold war between the power blocks of the time, that the number of sightings entered the mainstream consciousness. This conflict, in a century marked by bloodshed, was brought to a conclusion with the use of nuclear weapons. The standoff between the one-time allies during the Second War World (as it became known) was renowned as being one of Mutually Assured Destruction, as both political and economic power blocks developed increasingly sophisticated and powerful weapons of mass destruction. M.A.D. kept the peace, in that a catastrophic hot war between the two sides was averted, however, wars were waged via proxy states in the less industrialized countries instead. To such countries the relative peace enjoyed by members of the “nuclear club”, made the acquisition of these weapons appear desirable, despite the huge financial costs involved in their development. The risk of nuclear annihilation was long held to be the catalyst for the interest in humanity shown by these “extra-terrestrials”. The famous Roswell incident of 1947, with the initially reported crash of a vehicle, and capture of occupants (living and dead), occurred nearby a US nuclear bomber airbase, reinforced this belief. 

Evidence of visitation was long ridiculed and looked upon as fringe subject. As well as vehicle sightings, reports of human and animal abductions, involving medical experimentation became commonplace. It was long held that Govts were privy to knowledge of such events despite vehement denials. Despite career risking whistleblowers making public these govt investigations and coverups, the media kept up the pretense that such events were outlandish and open to ridicule. However, some information was still able to seep into the public consciousness. Believers were frustrated by the slow drip feed of information; however, it became clear that Govts worldwide were very aware of these visitations and were following a set roadmap of releasing knowledge to the general public. 

Some unofficial investigators (so called UFOlogists), fed by rumours regarding the captive E.T. discovered at Roswell, put forward the suggestion that these “grey aliens” were not actually as they appeared to be. Far from being aliens, they were humans from the far future, with the means of inter-dimensional travel across time and space. Such claims were vilified by certain sections of the UFO community, who refused to believe this. These aliens were interstellar naturalists, collecting biological samples. But all those that encountered such beings were struck by their odd insectoid mannerisms. 

However, this raised further questions such as why were some families targeted across several generations, and what would the connection be with the nuclear arms race, unless the unspeakable was due in the near future? The targeted families seemed of no real consequence, being very average; why wouldn’t the “visitors” approach chosen families of renown? 

Other clues were hidden in plain sight, in retrospect. In 1954, just seven years after Roswell an international grouping of governments embarked on building a Large Hadron Collider in Cern in Switzerland. This was a vast civil project, which didn’t come online until 2010 (excluding the abortive magnetic quench attempt in 2008). The building of this particle collider, not only possessing the ability to recreate the moments after the big band but also to open portals to other dimensions, began decades before the technology to operate the facility was available. As the knowledge of physics took great leaps forward, Cern was compatible with the new technology, such as quantum computing. If there were some who questioned this fortunate coincidence, it wasn’t made widespread.  Some recorded strange, and unnerving atmospheric anomalies (many seemingly saucer shaped craft) above Cern published on the internet, which were quickly disavowed as computer generated images. 

Despite the continuing narrative the world’s population were becoming increasingly aware that not all was at it appeared. People began questioning the reality as described in the world’s media, which was in opposition to their own observations. Politics became oddly extreme, despite the Western power block winning the cold war during the late 80’s and 90’s, the peace dividend was squandered in pointless wars. In the C21st a new cold war began to form as a rising economic superpower began to assert global hegemony, economically and militarily. This coincided with deep intersectional rifts forming in western societies in the early C21st; to such an extent that even questioning biological certainties became the status quo. Onetime open and liberal societies were on the point of self-destruction.  

At this point, as reality became increasingly frayed, a global Coronavirus pandemic took hold in 2020. The narrative of this pandemic itself was questionable from the initial nightmare images shown in the country of origin, which weren’t echoed in other countries, to the extreme measures enacted by economy destroying lockdowns. Its origin was a source of contention, from a so called wet market in Wuhan or an actual manufactured virus in a lab, the narrative remained fluid and subject to change, yet forcefully adhered to across all media outlets.  One theme was common, which was repeated across borders, which was the insistent application of RNA based vaccines. Many had questioned the wisdom of mass introducing synthetic RNA into the human genome, as the long term effects were an unknown. Across the media such dissenting voices were ruthlessly silenced. Two shots to acquire immunity required a booster and as the C21st progressed Govts inflicted biannual boosters on their population. This began to have a profound, long-term effect on human biology. 

The change was barely noticeable at first, but as countries across the globe introduced social credit systems and authoritarian control of their populations under the guise of climate concern, only the compliant continued with careers, especially as AI and robots caused mass redundancies amid the mass of the population. Procreation was only possible under license, the universal basic Income and enforced pod habitation made the traditional family life impossible. The vaccinated compliant became increasingly of one thought, developing a “hive mind”. It would take centuries for the physical changes to take shape of diminutive size and greying skin tones. 

It became clear that the future inter-dimensional visitors were indeed humans (if they could still be described as such) and that they had been drawn to the point in history when their branch of evolution began. It remains moot as to whether these future beings were merely observing this change or were the actual architects of their future evolution. 

Grey Alien by Harnois75 deviantArt