Author Description

The Wandering King by author Stephen Marte is based on events described in The Histories by Herodotus. People may have heard the story about King Leonidas and the famous last stand of the 300 Spartans at the pass of Thermopylae, but Herodotus' best stories have never been told-till now. Though Leonidas is a character in The Wandering King, this is not his story. The novel is told from the perspective of Leonidas' nephew, Euryanax; a little known member of Sparta's royal family. The book begins, "I am called Euryanax. In the Dorian tongue, eury means 'wandering' and anax means 'king.' The Wandering King. From my name, comes my story." The first book in the series, Summer, Harvest," War, begins 25 years before the famous Battle of Marathon and the start of the Greco-Persian Wars. Euryanax's father Dorieus, a brother of Leonidas, was disappointed when his father, King Anaxandridas, died and the ephors selected his elder brother Cleomenes as the next King of Sparta. Dorieus left Greece with his wife Phile, son Euryanax, and a small expedition of Lacedaemonians to build a colony in Libya. Go to war with Euryanax as he takes part in the siege of the Phoenician stronghold at Oea (modern Tripoli). Adventure with him to the city of ships, merchants and pornai, Corinth. Sail alongside this little-known prince of Sparta as he fights Illyrian pirates in the Ionian Sea, competes in the Pythian Games, and journeys to the center of earth where he learns his fate from the Delphic Oracle. Exotic locales and peoples, action and adventure, romance and revenge, land battles and sea battles, tribal rituals and Olympic-style games; The Wandering King has all this and more.