by Jo Graham
One of the fascinating things in Hand of Isis is the technology. How much of it is real?
All of it! One of the amazing things about Alexandria in this period is how very modern it is. If the pace of learning and technological growth had continued, it’s possible that Dion may have been right that they could have gone to the moon in a few centuries. There was a working model of a steamship, only in Egypt wood was so expensive that it was pointless to build one. The Antikythera Device was an analog computer that worked on gears and clockwork! Crude oil was already being refined into naptha, which today is best known as camp stove fuel. The aeliopile was a steam-powered jet engine. It is quite possible that if the Ptolemaic Dynasty had not fallen, and the Library and Museum had continued to be the first top-notch research facility in the world, that the year 500 ce would have seen telescopes and atmospheric flight rather than the decline of civilization into the Dark Ages.
What’s next for you?
I’m going back to the founding of Alexandria next—to the death of Alexander the Great and the first years of Ptolemaic Egypt. Want to come along?
reading group guide
The focus of Hand of Isis is the relationship between Cleopatra, Iras, and Charmian. What do you think of the relationship between the sisters? All three women represent an aspect of Isis—what do you think this says about them? What does this say about the roles available to women in their society and today?
Do you think that Caesar’s conquest of Egypt was necessary? Inevitable? Reversible? What is the best outcome that Cleopatra could have achieved?
Both Egypt and Rome are slave-owning societies, and Charmian is herself a slave. What are the differences between slavery in Egypt and Rome? How does it shape the states?
Charmian is very aware of her society’s double standard about men and women’s sexual behavior. Do you think there is still a double standard today? How is it the same or different than in Charmian’s time?
Charmian is Gull reincarnate, and Agrippa is Neas reincarnate. What about these two that made them such staunch allies in Black Ships helps them become enemies in Hand of Isis?
Cleopatra is a woman Pharaoh—what impact does that have on her ability to deal with Rome both positively and negatively, through marriage alliances, etc.? Does it make Egypt’s relations with Rome easier or harder? Would she have been more or less successful as a man?
At times Charmian muses on the life she would have had if she had been a man. What do you think her role would have been?
Charmian’s relationships with her sisters are in many ways more central to her life than her relationships with men. How is this similar or different to your own experiences?
Faith and science are both important to several characters in the book. How do Charmian and Dion reconcile the two in their lives? Is that reconciliation harmonious? How do we deal with this issue today?
Is Marcus Agrippa a hero or a villain? He ends the book full of regrets. What do you see as his big mistakes?
introducing
If you enjoyed
Hand of isis,
look out for
STEALING FIRE
by Jo Graham
The King was dead. Alexander lay in Babylon, in the palace of the Persian kings, upon the bed where he had died and I killed a man across his body for no reason that made any sense.
The melee had come even here, to the death chamber.
“To me! To me!” shouted Perdiccas, his head bare and his face shining with sweat. He claimed he was the heir, that Alexander had pressed his ring into his hand.
Others said it was meant for Krateros, who was not here.
And there were other claimants, of course. His body was not cold.
I took a step back, the blood running down the channels of the blade as I shifted into guard, rivulets of warmth across my knuckles. The King’s legs were bare below his chiton. If he had been decently covered, the cloth had slipped in the fighting. One drop fell from my blade and glistened on a golden hair.
The young eunuch had fallen across his torso and face, shielding him with his own dead body. At least I presumed he was dead. He was still as death, his back bared to the swords about the bier.
“Push them back!” Perdiccas screamed. It seemed he was winning.
I stood, sword in hand, above the bier. No one came near. I had no reason to attack anyone.
A man went down, and Perdiccas and two others rushed the doorway. They pressed them out into the hall. I heard the dying man choking out his life, but I did not move. Who should I belong to? Perdiccas? He was well enough but had never given me a word. Krateros, who had laughed at men who married foreign women and called their sons bastard?
My master was already dead.
And so I stood above the bier, listening to my breath harsh in the close air.
Outside, the sounds of the fight were becoming distant. Perhaps Perdiccas had pushed them back to the receiving hall, or toward the bathhouse.
The lamp guttered. The fragrant oil was almost gone. Soon the stench of death would fill the room.
The young eunuch moved. I saw him breathing shallowly. Having no reason to kill him, I cleaned off my sword on the fallen cloth, stepped over the dying, and left the room.
I found Glaukos in the kitchen. He had three pots of wine before him, and an onion. The knives and food lay half prepared on the table. The servants had been preparing a meal when they were frightened away.
Glaukos looked up at me, and his eyes were red. “Come to kill me then?”
I sat down heavily on the bench. “Why should I do that, you drunkard? The world is in ruins, and you’re at it again.”
“You’d do best to try it,” Glaukos advised. “No reason not to.”
I poured a small amount into a clay cup and took a sip. It was good, strong Bactrian red, dark and rich, entirely unwatered. I expect it had been intended for the King’s table.
“Elephants, he said,” Glaukos said. “The King wanted elephants. I said there was no way I could get elephants. You could talk to him just like that. I said no elephants, and what was he asking me about them for, as I never had anything to do with elephants in my life. Glaukos, he said, I know you can get them for me.” He refilled his cup, tears running down his face. “So elephants it was.”
“I don’t want to hear about your accursed elephants,” I said.
“When I showed up with those four elephants on the banks of the river . . .”
“Shut up about the elephants!” I said, and knocked the cup from his hand. It broke in fragments across the floor, the red wine stain spreading.
Glaukos blinked at me. “That wasn’t friendly,” he said mildly. He got up with the slow, purposeful movements of a man who is already drunk, went over to a shelf on the wall, and turned, holding another cup.
I stalked out of the kitchen.
The hallway was silent. If the battle had passed this way, it was gone now. Aimlessly, I wandered the corridors. In the receiving hall, the golden ornaments were stripped from the throne, a little carved table lying on its side. I went down the corridor that led to the bathhouse.
“Halt! Who’s there?” I heard a shout, and the more important sound of a bow being drawn.
I stopped. The voice was familiar. “Lydias of Miletus,” I said.
“Ah.” He stepped into the space between the bathhouse doors. I could see four or five men past him, some in their harness, in reasonable order. “Take your hand from your sword hilt,” he directed.
I did. “Artashir,” I said.
He was Companion cavalry, though he was armed with a bow. Persians learn archery very young, and I thought it wise not to doubt he could use it, when the point was aimed at my breast.
“Are you friend or foe?” he asked.
“Of whom?” I said.
Behind him the bathing pool was blue and clear. The King had spent most of his last days here.
“Of us,” Artashir said, with only a slight hesitation. He was tall and angu
lar, younger than I, with a closely trimmed beard in the Persian fashion.
“I am no enemy of yours,” I said. Truth, I hardly knew the man. We had not been in the same units until after Gedrosia, and then I had not made friends.
“We are holding the bathhouse,” he said.
“For whom?”
“For the King,” he answered.
I laughed and even to myself sounded overwrought. “The King is dead. You will hold the bathhouse for all eternity, then.”
Artashir straightened, his dark eyes suspiciously bright. “Then that is what we will do. We will wait for our orders, as Companions should.”
“Wait and rot then,” I said, and turned and walked away.
No arrow hit me in the back.
I could hear the battle sounds coming from the stable yard, but I had no desire to seek it out. My sword was too heavy in my hand, and the deserted palace too empty. In the anteroom to the receiving hall papers were spread, letters and dispatches, all the business of empire waiting for the King’s hand. The lamps burned on in their fretted holders. In the courtyard beyond, the fountain played. I half expected it to be frozen, droplets suspended in midair. Surely the sun should not set, the droplets fall.
I wandered back to the kitchen, where Glaukos still was.
He looked up blearily from the table. “Come back, have you?”
I shrugged. “Nowhere better to go. Best to die with a friend, I suppose.”
“That’s the way,” Glaukos said, moving over and pouring for me. Half the unwatered wine splashed out of the cup, his hands were that unsteady. “Always thought I would die with you.”
I raised my cup in salute. “To death, my friend Glaukos. Death and an eternity amid the shades.”
Glaukos raised his cup and looked at me over it, blinking. “You know, you’ve been a bit odd since Gedrosia, Lydias.”
“You’re calling me odd,” I said. “Alexander is dead. Does it matter if I’m odd? We’re going to be slaughtered in a foreign city, just like the Magi said. It’s the dice. You roll enough and you lose.” The wine was very, very good. It came to me that perhaps it had been meant for the King. Perhaps it was poisoned. There had been that tale about.
I looked into the dregs. Nothing to see. The flickering light made shapes on the surface, curled like an octopus in the bottom of the cup.
Glaukos touched my hand gently. “Drink up, my friend,” he said.
I did. If it was poisoned, I was past caring.
I drank with him while the night came in through the windows, while the lamp sputtered and died. Silence settled over the palace. Glaukos talked on and on, making less sense. “Elephants,” he whispered one last time, and lowered his head on his arms.
Poisoned, I thought. Of course.
From the far side of the room there was a rustle in the darkness. Two green eyes regarded me steadily. A great gray cat paced out of the shadows.
“Death,” I whispered. I thought she spoke to me, words I didn’t understand.
And night took me.
I woke to morning coming in through the window, and the loud annoying sound of Glaukos’ snores. My head throbbed, and on the table were five-toed paw prints in red wine.
The King was still dead.
I was still alive.
BLACK SHIPS
Jo Graham
An extraordinary tale of a young woman who becomes an oracle—set in an age when an oracle held more power than a king
In a time of war and doubt, Gull is an oracle. Daughter of a slave taken from fallen Troy, chosen at the age of seven to be the voice of the Lady of the Dead, it is her destiny to counsel kings.
When nine black ships appear, captained by an exiled Trojan prince, Gull must decide between the life she has been destined for and the most perilous adventure—to join the remnant of her mother’s people in their desperate flight. From the doomed bastions of the City of Pirates to the temples of Byblos, from the intrigues of the Egyptian court to the haunted caves beneath Mount Vesuvius, only Gull can guide Prince Aeneas on his quest, and only she can dare the gates of the Underworld itself to lead him to his destiny.
In the last shadowed days of the Age of Bronze, one woman dreams of the world beginning anew. This is her story.
“Haunting and bittersweet, lush and vivid, this extraordinary story has lived with me since I first read it.”—Naomi Novik, author of Her Majesty’s Dragon
Available wherever good books are sold
THE MAGICIAN’S APPRENTICE
Trudi Canavan
Set hundreds of years before the events of The Magicians’ Guild, THE MAGICIAN’S APPRENTICE is the new novel set in the world of Trudi Canavan’s Black Magician Trilogy.
In the remote village of Mandryn, Tessia serves as assistant to her father, the village Healer. Her mother would rather she found a husband. But her life is about to take a very unexpected turn.
When the advances of a visiting Sachakan mage get violent, Tessia unconsciously taps unknown reserves of magic to defend herself. Lord Dakon, the local magician, takes Tessia under his wing as an apprentice.
The hours are long and the work arduous, but soon an exciting new world opens up to her. There are fine clothes and servants—and, to Tessia’s delight—regular trips to the great city of Imardin.
However, Tessia is about to discover that her magical gifts bring with them a great deal of responsibility. For a storm is approaching that threatens to tear her world apart.
Available wherever good books are sold