The House of the Eagle

The House of the Eagle begins Duncan Sprott's 'Ptolemies Quartet', an epic restoration of the dark and glittering story of ancient Alexandria and the Greek Pharaohs of Egypt, whose extraordinary dynasty spans twelve generations from the death of Alexander the Great to the fall of Cleopatra. Narrated by Thoth, the ibis-headed Egyptian God of writing and wisdom, this book details the rise of the shrewd Ptolemy I from ordinary soldier of Macedon to Satrap of Egypt, and his coronation as Pharaoh and a god in his own lifetime. We follow then the astonishing history of Ptolemy's twelve turbulent children in unending wars, domestic murders and incestuous marriages, all set against the exotic backdrop of Egypt. With its cast of powerful characters - King Ptolemy himself, the violent Ptolemy Keraunos, the famous Thunderbolt, the luxury-loving Ptolemy Mikros, and their poisonous sister, Arsinoe Beta - this is a triumph of historical salvage that brings vividly to life the most bizarre family that ever existed. This is a great sequence of historical novels that brings Egypt to life in all its complexity and strangeness and will place 'The Ptolemies Quartet' in the company of Robert Graves's I Claudius and Mary Renault's The King Must Die.