Mood Riders
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Iphigenia—Princess of Mycenae, daughter of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon, friend to Cassandra; a character from Greek mythology, not mentioned in the Iliad but in Aeschylus’s The Libation Bearers and Euripides’ Iphigenia at Aulis and Iphigenia at Tauris.
Menelaus—King of Sparta; a character from Greek mythology portrayed in Homer’s Iliad.
Helen—Queen of Sparta, wife of Menelaus, Paris’s lover, and Clytemnestra’s sister; a character from Greek mythology, portrayed in Homer’s Iliad.
Achilles—Leader of the Myrmidon warriors who fight on behalf of Agamemnon; a character from Greek mythology, portrayed in Homer’s Iliad.
About the Author
Over the years Theresa Tomlinson has developed an outstanding reputation for her historical novels. Shortlisted twice for the Carnegie Medal and for the Sheffield Children’s Book Award, she takes a keen interest in the historical background of the northeast coast of England. Visits to Turkey have sparked Theresa’s imagination to research the ancient world of Troy and have resulted in THE MOON RIDERS, the first of two novels about the intriguing Amazon women and, in particular, Myrina of the Mazagardi tribe.
Theresa has three grown children and lives in Whitby, England, with her husband, an architect, and cat, Mewsli.
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Author’s Note
As a child I struggled to learn Latin for about six months, but eventually the teacher gave up in despair and I was sent down the corridor to join the “Greek Literature in Translation” class instead. I felt this to be a terrible disgrace but was soon cheered as, with a broad-minded, humorous nun as a teacher, I discovered an exciting and rather shocking world of adventure, magic, love, and tragedy. We read The Odyssey, The Iliad, The Oedipus Trilogy and The Histories of Herodotus. It was here that I first came across fabulous stories of the warlike women known as the Amazons.
Many years later, in 1997, I watched a BBC 2 “Horizon” television program called The Ice Maiden. An archaeologist, Natalia Polasmak, had discovered the frozen mummified body of a young woman buried with great honor and respect in the Altai Mountains, her shoulders, arms, and hands covered in beautiful tattoos. I found the whole program very moving, and was fascinated to hear the women archaeologists relating this find and other burials of women with weapons to The Histories of Herodotus. It seemed that the fabulous stories of Amazons might after all have been based on real nomadic tribeswomen, who lived, rode, and fought long ago in the area to the north and surrounding the Black Sea.
My interest in this subject was taken much further when I found Lyn Webster Wilde’s fascinating and thoroughly researched book On the Trail of the Women Warriors. I felt inspired to try to write a novel for young people based on the legends of the Amazons, but the more I discovered about Amazon mythology and history, the more vast and overwhelming the subject became. Remembering my Greek Literature school studies once again brought me to focus on the ever appealing, tragic story of Troy.
More research followed: Michael Wood’s In Search of the Trojan War was full of clear, practical, down-to-earth information and ideas, making the Trojan War only too real and believable. Neal Ascherson’s wonderfully human and readable book Black Sea helped to build a picture of the people and landscape to the north of Troy. The Fall of Troy, an epic poem by Quintus of Smyrna, 400 BC, told the story of Penthesilea’s fight with Achilles.
Despite these excellent sources of information, I still felt that there was something lacking. I could not get a clear picture in my mind of the colors, plants, and landscape. In the end there was nothing for it but to go to have a look at the ruins of Troy myself. On a cold, windy day in early May 2000, my husband and I walked around the ruins on the hillside at Hisarlik with the local guide and author, Mustafa Askin. Mustafa was full of information about the ruins and the history of Troy. His enthusiasm for the place was infectious as he patiently answered all our questions.
Later that day the sun came out. As I stood among the broken, but still sturdy, golden limestone walls of Troy, gazing down at the deep blue Aegean Sea, with the Hellespont to the right and Mount Ida behind to the left, I felt that somehow I’d come full circle, and that perhaps being sent out of the Latin class was one of the best things that had ever happened to me.
THERESA TOMLINSON, 2002
www.theresatomlinson.com
Credits
Jacket art © 2006 by Aleta Rafton
Jacket design by Hilary Zarycky
Copyright
Eos is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
The Moon Riders
Copyright © 2003 by Theresa Tomlinson
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Tomlinson, Theresa.
The moon riders / Theresa Tomlinson.— 1st American ed.
p. cm.
Summary: When thirteen-year-old Myrina of the Mazagardi tribe joins the Moon Riders, a revered band of warrior women, she becomes caught up in the life of the Trojan princess Cassandra and the epic, ten-year Trojan War.
ISBN-10: 0-06-084736-0 (trade bdg.)
ISBN-13: 978-0-06-084736-4 (trade bdg.)
ISBN-10: 0-06-084737-9 (lib. bdg.)
ISBN-13: 978-0-06-084737-1 (lib. bdg.)
EPub Edition © JANUARY 2012 ISBN 9780062193797
1. Amazons—Juvenile fiction. [1. Amazons—Fiction.
2. Cassandra (Legendary character)—Fiction. 3. Trojan War—Fiction. 4. Troy (Extinct city)—Fiction. 5. Mythology, Greek—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.T5977Mo 2006
2006000790
[Fic]—dc22
CIP
AC
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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
First American Edition
First published in 2003 in the United Kingdom by Corgi Books, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books
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