Kiya and Her Children: Rise and Fall of the Titans by Dennis Wammack

Formats

Hardcover Book Details

09/2024
9798986024691
306 pages
$32.00

Dennis Wammack

Author

Kiya and Her Children: Rise and Fall of the Titans

Kiya and Her Children is the second in a six-book series. It tells the story of Chief Vanam’s banishment of his mate, Kiya, and their children from his tribe of hunter-gatherers to become outcasts who cannot be looked upon—“Titans.” He expects them to die lonely, miserable deaths. Kiya, however, has other plans. The Titans, with love and humanity, overcome all obstacles and create a prospering industrial society and spread their flourishing civilization throughout the world. This is the story of the price they pay. The series, The Beginning of Civilization: Mythologies Told True, is a character-driven narrative that explores the fears and desires of flawed everyday people whose lives and exploits, told and retold through the ages, gave rise to our traditions and mythologies. Each book, like life and civilization, grows more complex and conflicted from the simple, predictable first book through the sprawling, multi-storied, multi-generational sixth.

Reviews

“I will do what’s best for my family,” a woman named Kiya declares early in this second entry in Wammack’s series imagining the human lives behind figures of myth from the dawn of civilization. On its own, Kiya’s assertion may not strike contemporary readers as bold, but Wammack, in fleet but perceptive storytelling that blends contemporary psychological understanding with the elemental directness of ancient texts, makes clear that this is, in fact, a breakthrough: Kiya, a mother, has begun to think of the children she has birthed as a family rather than members of a tribe, and she teaches them the ways of the world, some freshly invented, and bestows names upon them like Sagacity and Rivermaster. Her mate, Chief Vanam of the hunter-gatherer Serpent Clan, sees the children differently, planning to trade the girls to other tribes and let the boys attempt to prove their worth or die trying.

It's from this discord, and Kiya’s new idea, that the future of humanity rises, as this first family, soon cast out of the clan, claims the name Titans. Kiya makes another declaration, this one more clearly rousing: “Let us raise ourselves to the pinnacle of success, a family overflowing with riches to share with all who ask.” Wammack’s brisk novel charts the Titans’ rise, from the founding of the city of Tartarus to the building of great legacies, the narrative always reflecting the foundational stories it draws from but also emphasizing the human, even when the names of the next generation of Titans will pique the interest of any student of ancient myth: Cronos, “born perfect in every respect,” and who will eventually “groan” as he “deliver[s] Zeus into Rhea.”

Wammack’s demystifying approach makes familiar generational shifts—from Titans to Olympians like Zeus, Hera, Hades, and Demeter—feel both inevitable and surprising, and his treatment of Oceanids and Gigantes, solstices and battles, and the Great Library of Olympus (home of “all knowledge known to humanity”) always center one powerful idea: at the heart of these stories are people, just like us.

Takeaway: Swift, deeply human imagining of the dawn of the Olympians.

Comparable Titles: Mary Lefkowitz’s Greek Gods, Human Lives, Steven Mithen’s After the Ice.

Production grades
Cover: B
Design and typography: B
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A

Formats

Hardcover Book Details

09/2024
9798986024691
306 pages
$32.00

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