The Assyrian

Summary and Reviews of

The Blood Star

by Nicholas Guild

The sequel to Nicholas Guild’s international best-seller The Assyrian, The Blood Star is the epic story of Tiglath Ashur, a prince of the royal house, as he faces years of exile in Arabia, Egypt, Sidon, Greece and Sicily and then a return to his homeland of Assyrian, where the mystery of his fate is at last unraveled.

What others have said about Nicholas Guild’s The Blood Star:

Tulsa World

“I was beginning to believe that literate authors had stopped writing novels. Now my faith is restored. . .Nicholas Guild is a fantastic storyteller. Every word has a purpose. His characters, his settings, his actions are crystal clear.”

Washington Post

“Guild has surpassed himself with this long historical novel, which is entertaining from start to finish and leaves one with the feeling that there could yet be another to follow . . .dare we hope!”

Publishers Weekly

“Shot through with dark, exotic lyricism, Guild’s majestic historical epic cuts a wide swath through ancient Assyria, Egypt, Phoenicia, Sicily, Greece. . .This saga serves up a rich, intoxicating feast, interweaving a cultural anthropology of unfamiliar lands and a stoic meditation on mortality, fate, revenge and justice, the ties of love and blood.”

Philadelphia Inquirer

The Blood Star is the kind of novel they invented summers, vacations and beaches for. It is a big, grand spectacle, an epic read that take you back 2,700 years to ancient Assyria. It so vividly re-creates the period that you’d swear author Nicholas Guild researched the book in a previous life . . .The Blood Star is more than 660 pages long, and The Assyrian is almost as weighty, but no matter how many hours you spend with these tales, you’ll be sorry when the last page is turned.

Amazon Customer Reviews

4+ Stars

“I can't remember how many years it's been that I have read a book, 664 pages, cover to cover, hardly coming up for air.”

THE MACEDONIAN, an international best seller now being published in English for the first time, is based on the early life of Philip II, King of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great and perhaps the greatest military genius of the ancient world. Born a minor prince of the royal house, he survives the intrigues of a family in which treachery and murder are almost a tradition. A brilliant commander while still in his teens, he becomes king when his brother, King Perdikkas, and half the Macedonian army are massacred and his country is on the brink of ruin. As wily in diplomacy as in war, he manages to stave off Macedonia’s lesser enemies while he prepares for the final struggle with the bandit empire that would overwhelm her.

Yet Philip was also a man who loved and suffered. His mother hated him from the moment of his birth and he was raised by foster parents who taught him to see the truth of life as most people experience it. Shuttled about as a diplomatic hostage, the learned politics and war. In the end, after losing almost his whole family, he finds happiness with the daughter of his bitterest enemy.

Born to rule

Although born to rule, Aidan lives as a scribe in a remote Irish monastery on the far, wild edge of Christendom. Secure in work, contemplation, and dreams of the wider world, a miracle bursts into Aidan's quiet life. He is chosen to accompany a small band of monks on a quest to the farthest eastern reaches of the known world, to the fabled city of Byzantium, where they are to present a beautiful and costly hand-illuminated manuscript, the Book of Kells, to the Emperor of all Christendom.

Thus begins an expedition by sea and over land, as Aidan becomes, by turns, a warrior and a sailor, a slave and a spy, a Viking and a Saracen, and finally, a man. He sees more of the world than most men of his time, becoming an ambassador to kings and an intimate of Byzantium's fabled Golden Court. And finally this valiant Irish monk faces the greatest trial that can confront any man in any age: commanding his own Destiny.