Day of the Minotaur

By Thomas Burnett Swann

In DAY OF THE MINOTAUR, modern readers at last have an opportunity to rediscover the imaginative genius of Thomas Burnett Swann, a writer whose works have been compared with the marvel-packed sagas of J.R.R. Tolkien, the sweeping adventure-tales of Mary Renault, and the sheer story-telling magic of Jack Vance and Edgar Rice Burroughs. This is the novel of Eunostos, the last of an ancient and powerful race of bull-men; of the Achaean conqueror Ajax; and of the beautiful Thea, known as the Beast Princess. You will not soon forget these characters, nor the unusual Bears of Artemis, the treacherous, bee-like creatures called Thriae, and the rest of the humans and non-humans who come to the final battle in the thunderous War of the Beasts. A world of wonder and excitement that will grip your imagination from the first page to the last!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wildside Press
• Release date: Apr 30, 2013
• ISBN: 9781434446411

Book preview

Reviews for Day of the Minotaur

[schant-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Couldn't work out whether it was aimed at kids or adults - an uneasy mix of child-like woodland fantasy and adult sexuality.

[dinadansfriend · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Halfway between C.S. Lewis and the more imaginative world of J.R.R. Tolkien, we get this good entertainment about how the Mythic creatures lived with men, until the balance was upset by Dadelus, and Theseus...Good fun....

[myopicbookworm · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The cover illustration and blurb are deeply misleading. The minotaur who gapes so garishly on the front, lurking horribly with matted red hair through a dripping cave, turns out to be scarcely more fierce than Mr Tumnus the faun in C.S. Lewis's "The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe". The frail and beautiful heroine - half-forest-dweller ("beast"), half Mycenaean princess -abandoned with her kid brother in the minotaur's lair, proceeds to ... tidy his den and make him a nice tunic! In tone the book is just a little more sexually charged than Narnia, as the gentle beast-folk (centaurs, dryads, and the like) fight a rearguard action against the ravaging Achaean Greeks, who are displacing the presumably more beast-friendly Mycenaeans. The story purports to be the memoir of the minotaur, who calls his tale "The Passing of the Beasts"; it might have been a better title for the book.MB 28-ix-2010