Tom Bast's Historical Fantasy:

Goddess Rebel

The last chapter is excellent and made a lasting impression on me. — Amazon 5-star review

Seekers like us enjoy fantastic tales from incredible worlds, real and imaginary. Would you like me to tell you a great one?

I’ve written novels since I was nineteen, and one reason I write them is to figure out what really happened over the course of our history.

People who had the same bodies and brains as we do existed three hundred thousand years ago, which is 12,000 25-year generations ago.

The first major inflection point in human history took place around seventy thousand years ago, which is 2,800 generations ago.

Something shifted in our consciousness. This has been written about and studied a great deal, even though there is scant evidence to analyse. It is clear that we took a massive leap forward in intelligence, understanding, imagination, and ability.

We began to make art. We began to practice rituals. The tools we made and the ingenuity in them expanded exponentially. We explored the entire planet, and as communities settled far from one another, they became significantly different.

It’s impossible to know exactly how much we advanced, because 472 generations after this original awakening, there was a massive global flood. 14,600 years ago, sea levels rose sixteen meters over the course of a hundred years. Obviously, this would have destroyed the vast majority of humanity’s major settlements and changed the planet completely, forcing humanity into survival mode.

But it only took a few thousand years for humanity to regroup and establish what we think of as the first civilizations.

Goddess Rebel takes place during humanity’s first post-flood transformation in the West.

About 10,000 years ago, a mere 400 generations ago, two radically different cultures collided in Europe. The seminal book about this collision is The Chalice and the Blade by Riane Eisler, and her story has been verified by a great deal of scholarship in the years since she first proposed it.

On the shores of the Black Sea, the Kurgan people arose. They were fierce warriors who worshipped a sun god. They had metal weapons. They domesticated the horse. They had wheeled vehicles. They had kings and fortified settlements and fought battles. For their epoch, they were incredibly powerful.

Meanwhile, in Northern Europe, a much different society arose. People built villages in the open. They made thousands of goddess figurines. They smelted metal but made sculptures and utensils instead of weapons. They traded widely and had some sort of a written language. They did not engage in much warfare.

When the Kurgans discovered the gentle people of Northern Europe, they conquered them quickly and easily.

Goddess Rebel tells the story of a young man who lived in what is now northern France, and who endured the first wave of Kurgan attacks to sweep through his homeland.

I focus on this moment in history because much of Western culture arises from it. Apparently, as the Kurgans took over, they sort of fell in love with the goddess people. Western culture became a combination of the hard Kurgan warrior and the gentle goddess craftsperson.

In literature ever since, we have had stories of vicious rulers undermined by the wise old witch or warlock living in the woods. These characters are direct reflections of the formative cultural players in European history.

One of the best things about writing a historical fantasy taking place at this time is that so little evidence exists from this time period the imagination can roam freely without too many restraints from facts.

I assume that the scholarship is correct, as it stood when I wrote the book a few years ago. I also assume that both the Kurgans and the goddess people made most everything out of wood, fabric, and skins.

That way, I can put all sorts of cool stuff in their possession, all of which might have existed and that would have certainly rotted away to nothing.

I wanted to be my main character, whose name is Kaja, and to witness the invasion of the Kurgans from the goddess people’s point of view.

I also wanted to explore the how these two radically different world views might meld into one.

And finally, I wanted to ponder how this epochal cultural encounter changed the psychology of the Western mind. 

If you read the reviews, you’ll find out that the book comes to a resounding conclusion, when a great secret is revealed.

I hope you let me tell you a fresh story that may inspire you anew.

You’ll enjoy Kaja if you like any of these:

Queen of Oak
The Norse Queen
Clan of the Cave Bear
The Flower Boat Girl
Odin’s Game