Wanderer's Tales #7 - Cities
Welcome to Issue 7 of Wanderer’s Tales, featuring a book review and Chapter Seven of Shield of the Goddess.
Welcome to Issue 7 of Wanderer’s Tales, the newsletter of Ancient Roads, the web site of Seattle writer and composer Chris Struble.
Here you will find fantasy fiction set in ancient worlds where music makes magic, and the road ahead is always uncertain. Wanderers welcome.
In this newsletter is Chapter Seven of Shield of the Goddess, the adult fantasy novel I am releasing here as a web serial starting in 2025.
This chapter finds Shala, a fourteen year old girl, arriving in the ancient city of Feros, where she hopes to become a priestess.
Chris Struble
I have updated People and Places, with new characters Shala meets in this chapter.
Chris Struble
I have also added a new Reviews section to my website.
Chris Struble
Check out my review of Daughter of the Goddess Lands: a Prehistoric Epic, by Sandra Saidak, on TheStoryGraph.com.
The theme of this newsletter is “cities”.
In the last newsletter I mentioned the Natufians, a culture in the Near East that in 9500 BCE had the first settlements in the world, villages of about a hundred people, and no agriculture or pottery.
I also said that the earliest cities showed no evidence of fortifications, palaces, or warfare. Here are a few examples from the Near East.
- Çatalhöyük, in Türkiye, founded before 7000 BCE, had agriculture, domesticated sheep, and several thousand people.
- Ayn Ghazal, in Jordan, also founded before 7000 BCE, had agriculture, domesticated goats, and several thousand people. The featured image is from a video of what Ayn Ghazal may have looked like.
As I undertook to rewrite Shield of the Goddess this year as a serial, I realized that my original version of the city of Feros, with its columned temples, stone walls, bronze gates, and elected king (awkward!) looked more like a Bronze Age imperial city than I meant it to be. So I am rewriting it.
The version of Feros you’ll see from here on is smaller, more peaceful, and more democratic, like the early cities I mention in this newsletter. I am looking forward to sharing it with you.
As I write this newsletter, I am saddened by current events unfolding, where the same regions of the world where humans made some of their first successful attempts to live together in cities, have become war zones. We must do better. I hope you will join me in holding our leaders accountable.
If you enjoyed this newsletter, or the Books, Music, and Reviews I am sharing here, I hope you will leave a comment below.
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See you on the road!
Chris Struble