It is the year 1197 BC in Troy of the Dardanelles.
Calypso is seventeen, mistrusting and mischievous. She should be; she’s a princess. She hates her town and everything in it, and dreams to one day fly away from there. She hates royal chores and responsibilities and wants nothing to do with it, but on her death bed her mother makes Calypso promise that the rebellious princess will care for her dad and her people. Uncapable to fulfill her pledge, Calypso plunges into deep depression. She’s on the verge of suicide when, one night, a fiery snake flies over her city and burns it to the ground. Alone, confused and scared, tears streaking her soot-plastered face, Calypso invokes her dead mother now understanding how much she really loved everyone she has lost.

Mother Earth hears her, and standing on the ashes of the burnt city the two forge a pact. Calypso and her father will live, but she must not fall in love, marry or have children. She must find and bring back from the future a special person, a boy who loves ancient Earth. With his help, the princess will have a chance to change the destiny of the people she once despised.

Daniel Hiempsal is also seventeen, and has a passion. He studies ancient climates with the guide of his father, a famous archaeologist. A vision comes to him, in the shape of a girl, and she asks that he follow her to her past. Temptation is great; he could see with his own eyes the world he loves so much. But when Calypso returns to Troy with Daniel, time travel has turned him into a ghost.

Daniel is not a common ghost, like, say, a ghost from the past who has gone through some horrific ordeal and finds himself undead. No, Daniel is a ghost from the future, who carries in his brain information unheard of in the Bronze Age, and he sure needs all of his wits if he wants to make it through this neck-breaking, dizzying adventure and return to his normal times.

Started on a bad note and with a lot of mistrust and insecurities, the relationship between Daniel and Calypso slowly blossoms. In the end, they forge a friendship that overcomes the barriers of space and time.

Goodreads

I won this book through a Goodreads giveaway.

This is a story where the past and the future collide, literally. Calypso is the princess of Troy and she is a spoiled princess at that. Extreme tragedy starts when her mother, lying on her death bed, makes Calypso promise to take care of her father and her people. Next thing you know her whole world is being destroyed by a huge fiery snake. Her village is burned and destroyed. With very little life left, she calls on the gods, Mother Earth specifically, to help her. She is sent on a quest to go to the future to find Hiempsal and bring him back to help free Mother Earth. She is unhappy as no one believes in her anymore. The journey takes Calypso to the future to Daniel and then back to her time and on the quest to save the world. The journey leads them into lands with extreme prejudices and some full of love. The relationship between Daniel and Calypso is fun and eye opening. They have a connection that at the end will bring a tear to your eye. This story is full of history and gods of the past with an amazing tale of friendship. A fun story!

Years have passed since Gianna Scannell became an adult. Though she went on to a very serious and at times heartbreaking profession, she never lost the sense of wonder that is typical of adolescents. She sees herself as an eternal teen and enjoys writings by teens or for teens. She was born in Italy, the country of poets, opera composers and singers. She is an eternal optimist and still believes in the future.

She wrote Ashenland after years of education about the Bronze Age, particularly about the people who inhabited Asia Minor during the Bronze Age. It is fortunate that recently many landmark discoveries were made about that age. This added a sense of place to her novel, the first of a series of four.

She is a retired US-trained trauma surgeon and a former professor of Basic Sciences at the St James School of Medicine-Anguilla. She lives in St John US Virgin Islands with her husband Denis and her german shepherd dog Kiki.

Beside the many technical publications in medical journals, Dr. Scannell is one of the authors of the Memoir ‘Being a Woman Surgeon’ published by Gordian Knot Books. Her story carries the title of ‘Dissecting the Soul of a Woman Surgeon’.