Blind Gods

Spears fly like thunderbolts from the gods--and the nightmare is only beginning. In 244 BCE, nineteen-year-old Agis takes the throne of a Sparta that has forgotten what made it great. The legendary warriors have grown fat on gold and luxury. The helots--a conquered people forced to till Spartan land for Spartan masters--seethe with suppressed fury. And the five powerful ephors who truly control the city have no interest in change. Agis dares anyway. His plan is as radical as it is dangerous: cancel crippling land debts, redistribute the vast estates hoarded by a few hundred families, and offer citizenship to the very people Sparta has enslaved for generations. His own mother calls him insane. His wife, the beautiful Agiatis, warns of forces he cannot see. And his co-king Leonidas, fresh from the opulence of the Persian court, watches with cold calculation. Yet Agis is not alone. His fierce companion Amphares has pledged everything to the cause. In the mountains, a helot fugitive named Ketros leads a desperate band who dare to dream of freedom. And a mysterious Hebrew woman from Jerusalem named Zara arrives with a proposition that could change the balance of power across the ancient world. Three love stories. A web of betrayal spun by those closest to him. And a young king who must decide how much he is willing to sacrifice for a city that may not deserve saving. Blind Gods is a sweeping novel of ancient Sparta--where ambition and idealism collide, where loyalty is the rarest currency, and where the gods watch in silence as mortals destroy what they love most.