Book Reviews
Last Updated 02/26/2020
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Books About Troy's Cassandra
Leah CWPack
There
are well-established fandoms out in the mainstream, based on figures and
events, both historical (Custer, Edward III, Akenaten, Jack the Ripper, etc.)
and semi-historical (Arthur, Robin Hood, etc.). There are scholarly books on
the subjects, of course, but the fascination of these characters often inspires
professional fiction as well. Because of the nature of the Immortals in the
HIGHLANDER universe, some of these figures work their way into the lore of the
series, either in canon or fan fiction. The character of Cassandra in HL
remains a bit of a mystery; it was never made clear whether she was the actual
figure in the Trojan legend, or simply named after her.
Troy
is a city that existed only in legend until Henrich Schliemann actually
unearthed the city in the 1800's and brought it into reality. What makes Troy
unique is that much classical literature exists detailing the events
surrounding the siege and destruction of the ancient city, and many of the
people that were involved in those events. We have no way of proving which of
these people actually existed, or which of their deeds actually occurred, but
no one can study the story without coming to the conclusion that there must
have been a good deal of reality upon which the legendary events were based. In
a way, Troy was the world's first instance of a single event that received
independently corroborated news coverage.
Among
the many famous characters that were involved in the Troy story, mortal, god
and demi-god. They include Helen, Achilles, Hector, Odysseus, Agamemnon, the
Amazons, Ajax, Paris, and a host of others. There was also a woman named
Cassandra. One of the many daughters of Troy's king and queen, Cassandra had
the gift and curse of prophecy. She could foretell the grim fate of the city
and its inhabitants, but nobody wanted to hear or believe her doom saying. A
study of the Troy story reveals that Cassandra was caught in a world undergoing
a profound change. Goddess worship was rapidly losing ground to more
patriarchal pantheons, and women were beginning to lose their power within
human society. Caught up in this world, Cassandra mourns what appears to be a
human race gone mad with violence and lust, two very male pastimes. The
abduction of the beautiful Helen is the reason for the war; the love of heroic
bloodletting sustains it for ten years.
The
books below are attempts to reconstruct the story of Troy into a fictional
account, told from Cassandra's point of view. I recommend both, but will be
very general in review in order not to spoil the stories for any readers.
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Inside the Walls of Troy by Clemence McLaren |
This version of the telling of
Troy's fall takes a dual approach; the first half of the novel is told from the
point of view of young Helen of Troy; the second half is told by Cassandra.
While not told in as complex a fashion as the other two, we do get some
different insights into the players and events of this monumental event of
ancient history. This telling includes no overt events of a supernatural
nature, and it does sanitize any of the more graphic violent or sexual events.
I didn't find the reluctant friendship that develops between Cassandra and
Helen to be totally convincing. This telling might have been focused toward a
slightly younger audience.
If you click on the picture
above, you will be connected to the Amazon.com site for this book where you can
read even more reviews of it from a variety of readers (as well as order it).
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Cassandra by Christa Wolf |
A novel and three essays, the author
writes a very scholarly account of the events surrounding the Trojan War. This
account is translated from the original German, told in the first person. At
first, I had some difficulty following the narrative. Cassandra's tells her
story in non-sequential order, jumping back and forth in time as she reflects
on what happened while a captive on her way to Agamemnon's palace.
Nevertheless, I was drawn into the story and carried along, to share
Cassandra's horror over the fate of the city and the people she had known.
Instead of a character maddened by grief and frustrated prophecy, we get the
impression of a very strong, practical woman caught up in events she fortells
and cannot change, but comes to understand. And as she speaks to us, we come to
understand them too. Read the essays as well; they give fascinating insight
into how Wolf got pulled into the persona of her main character, and compelled
to tell the story of her and her ancient world.
If you click on the picture
above, you will be connected to the Amazon.com site for this book where you can
read even more reviews of it from a variety of readers (as well as order it).
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Firebrand by Marion Zimmer Bradley |
Bradley's style is very, very different
from Wolf. She is a novelist first, not a scholar, and although she did quite a
bit of detailed research before writing this story, she also takes artistic
license at several critical points. This does not spoil the reader's enjoyment.
Bradley tells the entire story of Cassandra's life, not just the Trojan War,
and in the telling, we learn quite a bit about that part of the world at that
time. The famous people she encounters come alive as people. The gods and
goddesses are real, and their effect on mortals is capricious as they squabble
among themselves. Amidst it all, Cassandra, a princess in the court of King
Priam and Queen Hecuba, grows up to be an independent woman who is cursed to
see glimpses of a terrible future, and stands by as witness as they happen. One
thing emerges clearly from both novels; even though she knows what will happen,
Cassandra does not attempt to flee the terrible destiny of Troy. She is as
brave as any of the classical heroes she sees doing battle from the ramparts of
the city, whether out of office as a priestess in the temple or as princess to
the king. Braver, perhaps, because her own family refuses to believe anything
she foretells to save them from their own folly, and eventually they condemn
her as a madwoman. Ultimately, Bradley takes a different approach for the end
of the story than the more well-known fate of Cassandra recounted in
Aeschylus' classical play Agamemnon. In
the Iliad itself, Euripedes had nothing
to say about what happened to Cassandra after her abduction by the King of
Mykenea, so she chooses to continue the narrative. Here lies my only real
complaint with FIREBRAND. Up until that point, Bradley tells a very detailed
chronicle of what Cassandra experiences. At the end of the novel, the woman goes
off into the world for more adventures that sound as if they are utterly
fascinating, but Bradley gives us only a few sketchy generalizations and draws
the story to a rapid close. If you're like me, you would have gladly read a
second novel that takes off into the events in the life of the woman named
Cassandra after the more well-known tragedy of Troy.
By clicking on the picture
above, you can go to the Amazon.com site for this book. The book is currently
out of print, but they will do a book search for you or you can search for it in used books stores. In
the meantime, there are tons of reviews of the book on the Amazon.com site.
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The Captive Soul by Josepha Sherman |
The Captive Soul centers around the existence of an
Egyptian sword believed to house the captured soul of an ancient king. It's
hanging about in a museum in New York, and MacLeod is in New York on business
and stops by to see an old friend. While at the museum he views the sword and
runs into Methos. They discuss a series of murders going on on the West Side,
and eventually Methos sees a picture of a crime scene and determines that some
strange symbols found there are actually Hyksos writing. He tells MacLeod about
an insane Immortal he didn't get to behead in ancient Egypt, who might be
looking for the sword in order to free the soul within it. They concoct a plot
to draw the Immortal out so they can kill him. And then they do
kill him. The end.
The present day story is broken
up with many, many long flashbacks to 1573 BC, Egypt. Out of 212 pages, only 55
take place in the present day.
In the flashback, Methos
becomes embroiled in a plot to overthrow the Hyksos rulership. Khyan (there's
the K) is the "half-brother" of the Hyksos king, and he's insane.
Methos has to win his trust in order to get close to the king, which he does.
The plot succeeds and the king is killed. The priests condemn the king's soul
to be trapped forever in his own sword.
I want to talk about the book on
three levels: The purely mechanical, the story construction, and the
characterization. First, mechanics.
I was deeply dismayed at the
number of very basic mechanical problems. Between over-use of exclamation
points -- in exposition, in internal monologue, in conversation -- and clumsy
use of point of view, I found myself wondering if the novel had actually been
edited before it went to press.
There were sections where the
point of view character paused in mid-thought to consider how beautifully he
was dressed, places where Egyptian characters paused in mid-thought to review
the identity of a god who'd just been mentioned. Not once -- many, many times.
The sentence construction was terrible, that's the best I can say for it. A
six-line paragraph consisting of one sentence was the worst offender, but there
were many, many other places where the prepositional phrases just got away from
her. And did I mention the exclamation points? Many times I felt like the
character doing the thinking was shouting to himself.
The language was alternately
too dry and too florid. The sex scenes (and there were a few) were more amusing
than anything else. The "love me! I will not break! I will not
break!" scene in particular left me giggling. Gasps and moans of joy, silken
flesh, yeah, yeah, yeah. <pause to quell irritation> It was kind of
insulting.
The story itself was a frame
story, obviously, with the greatest part of the action taking place in 1573 BC,
in Egypt. This immediately distanced me from it; I confess I'm in it for the
relationship between Mac and Methos, even on a purely gen level, and there just
wasn't space for that in the 55 pages of mystery-solving and k'immie-hunting
that took place in the present. The flashbacks didn't reveal much of anything
about Methos beyond what sort of things had happened to him way back when. I
didn't feel as if I'd learned anything new about the character that couldn't
have been summed up in just a few lines. Most flashbacks in the episodes are
less about the events that occur than they are about what these events mean to
the characters involved in them, and they tell us something about who these
people are. I found the flashback portion of the story to be intensely
non-revelatory. The plot, which was no more than a k'immie of the week story
dressed up with a lot of historical detail, was predictable and unexciting --
both in the past and the present. The ease with which Mac and
Methos executed their plan to lure out Khyan the Crazy Immortal was -- pardon
my descent into irritation -- sick and wrong. There was no tension, no fear it
wouldn't work, and no reason to fear, apparently. They decided to do it, and
they did it. End of story.
Even though it's pretty obvious
I didn't like much of this book at all, the biggest stumbling
block for me was the characterization. I had no sense I was reading about
MacLeod and Methos, for one thing. In the present day there seemed to be no
connection between them at all beyond a surface acquaintance. Mac thought a
great deal about how mysterious and unknown Methos was and how very little
Methos revealed about himself. Methos thought a great deal about not getting
killed -- and didn't seem much concerned with whether Mac kept his head or not.
The present-day Methos was distant, sometimes cold, and mostly disinterested.
It was as if the author took the Methos we see on the surface on screen and
made that all he is in the book. None of his heart showed
through, and in several instances Mac is left reflecting on how cold and
indifferent Methos is -- something that directly contradicts canon. Mac is
quite well aware, canonically, that Methos cares a lot more than he likes to
let on. The Methos Chronicles site places this after "Till Death" in
the episodic time-line, and I'm certain Mac's got a better handle on Methos by
that time than he's shown to have in The Captive Soul.
Mac himself is cardboard. He's
the one who thinks quite often about what he's wearing. I never knew he was
that concerned with his looks. He's just around to ponder the
mystery that is Methos, to make an occasional sharp remark to remind us that
Methos doesn't care much about mortals.
And that brings us to the
k'immie. If Mac is cardboard, this guy is paper. He has no personality, he has
no redeeming qualities, he has no complexity. He's just a mindless nutcase.
There's nothing quite so boring, IMHO, as irredeemable evil. He loves his
brother, and he likes seeing people killed. Now you know as much about him as
you need to in order to understand his character and his role in the book.
Lest you think there was
absolutely nothing I liked about this book, let me assure you, that's not the
case. I could see, particularly in the flashbacks, the author trying to meld
the Methos of the horsemen with the Methos we know today. I don't think she
succeeded, but the effort was there. One scene in particular, in which Khyan
asks Methos about a slave Methos has kind of fallen in love with and Methos
denies any feeling for her, harks back to Kronos and Cassandra in a very
subtle, skillful way. In fact, I think that was the only scene in the book that
really, really felt like Methos to me.
I decided to buy the book based
on reading a scene from it I found at the Methos Chronicles site, the one where
Methos tells Mac he's given up his Boy Scout badges. I liked the scene on the
site and I'm happy to report I still liked it when I read it in the book. It
was, however, kind of like one of those movie-trailer things where once you've
seen it, you've seen all the good stuff the movie has to offer. There were some
amusing lines from Methos, and the author had obviously done some research into
ancient Egypt.
So, basically: I wouldn't put
this one on my shopping list if I were you. It neither contributes to nor
detracts much from canon and reading it was one of the most frustrating,
irritating experiences I've ever had with professional fiction. I had very high
hopes for it, because I'd seen people saying good things about the author and
because I'm having this whole resurgent conversion thing going. In the final
analysis, however, there are plenty of people writing Highlander
fan fiction who are much more worthy of your time and attention.
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