Diomedes in Kyprios (Diomedeia #2)

This book was an Editor's Pick from Publishers Weekly Booklife and a finalist for the Chanticleer 2025 Chaucer Award for Early Historical Fiction.

After the fall of Troy, during the Bronze Age Collapse, Diomedes leads his Akhaian (Achaean) troop inland and helps bring down the Hittite Empire. In so doing, he falls in love with its queen, Lieia-Hepa. They become tragically separated in the Underworld and desperately agree to meet again at the Temple of the ancient Bird-Goddess in Paphos on Kyprios (Cyprus), where the marauding Sea Peoples are gathering. They each must undergo a hero’s quest to reach Paphos and find each other again, but many dangers stand in their way. Lieia’s emergence from the sea after a shipwreck is mistaken by the people for the birth of Goddess Aphrodite, while the Akhaians on Kyprios welcome Diomedes as their new leader. The pair become the rulers of Paphos, but they must still deal with jealous rivals, ruthless pirates, pretty Adonis (who is madly in love with Lieia-Aphrodite), and sorcery. Lieia becomes drawn to the role of Aphrodite and the lure of Adonis, so she begins to forget who she really is.

This is a historically based novel with authentic, mythic, and fictional characters interacting across the extraordinary panorama of the Bronze Age Collapse after the Fall of Troy and the Hittite Empire. This was a time of such chaos that empires fell, royalty was overthrown, palaces and temples were destroyed, and the hierarchy of the gods was doubted, yet people’s self-reliance emerged like never before, and the ancient Great Goddess of the Cycles of Time, who had been suppressed, began to regain her former dominance. The Bronze Age Collapse was brought about by similar issues to those we face today—massive climate change, the control of wealth by power elites, the problem of runaway migrations, and wars of conquest.