A series of four books based on the rise of the Persia empire under Cyrus II (Cyrus the Great) and the women who were a part of it all. Beginning with the story of Amytis of Media, it includes Cyrus’s wife Cassandane of the Achaemenids and their daughter Atossa who will later marry Darius and become mother to Xerxes. The series also recounts the conditions of the Bible’s literary beginnings and the tumultuous era of the Babylonian empire under Nebuchadnezzar through its fall under Nabonidus to Cyrus, who would encourage populations in Babylonian exile to return to their countries of origin even as he headed farther east, possibly encountering the new teachings of Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha).
