The Moon Riders is a young adult historical novel by Theresa Tomlinson

Theresa Tomlinson

-Biography:As a child, she lived in Cleveland and North Yorkshire where her father was a vicar, but had little interest in writing stories. It was only as she began to tell stories to her three children that she began to enjoy writing. She especially likes writing historical fiction...

, first published in 2002. There is also a second book in this series called The Voyage of the Snake Lady

The Voyage of the Snake Lady

The Voyage of the Snake Lady is a teenage/young adult novel by the British author Theresa Tomlinson first published in 2007. It is the follow-up to the novel The Moon Riders....

.

Plot introduction

This story is about the Moon Riders, known historically as the Amazons

Amazons

The Amazons are a nation of all-female warriors in Greek mythology and Classical antiquity. Herodotus placed them in a region bordering Scythia in Sarmatia...

. The main character is Myrina, who joins the Amazons in her teenage years and becomes one of the very prestigious moon dancers.

Myrina joins the Moon Riders when she is 13. She becomes friend and confidante to Cassandra the prophetic princess of Troy. As the 'Snake Lady' she acquires a gang of four young orphans who travel with her, until all but one have been killed.

Family

Myrina is daughter to Gul and is the younger sister of Reseda. Later in the book she becomes aunt to Phoebe and Yildiz - who she adopts. She marries her childhood friend Tomi and has a baby girl by him. Tomi is killed while they lead the slaves away from Troy. Yildiz also dies, but she dies avenging her family's deaths, mainly that of her mother.

Troy and the Warrior Women series

In writing The Moon Riders, Tomlinson drew on a mixture of Greek mythology

Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...

, such as The Odyssey and The Iliad as well as archaeological and historical works, such as a BBC2 Horizon programme called The Ice Maiden, and Lyn Webster Wilde's book On the Trail of the Women Warriors.

The second book of the series, The Voyage of the Snake Lady, relates the tale of the now grown up Myrina and her tribe of Moon Riders, many of whom are refugees from the slave pens of Troy

Troy

Troy was a city, both factual and legendary, located in northwest Anatolia in what is now Turkey, southeast of the Dardanelles and beside Mount Ida...

. This story draws on the adventures of Herodotus

Herodotus

Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...

  in describing the fate of the Moon Riders, whilst also drawing on Euripedes' Iphigenia at Tauris in order to continue Iphigenia's story. Tomlinson acknowledges in the Authors Note to this book that, whilst most accounts of the Trojan war

Trojan War

In Greek mythology, the Trojan War was waged against the city of Troy by the Achaeans after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, the king of Sparta. The war is among the most important events in Greek mythology and was narrated in many works of Greek literature, including the Iliad...

 have Cassandra

Cassandra

In Greek mythology, Cassandra was the daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of Troy. Her beauty caused Apollo to grant her the gift of prophecy...

 taken by Agamemnon

Agamemnon

In Greek mythology, Agamemnon was the son of King Atreus and Queen Aerope of Mycenae, the brother of Menelaus, the husband of Clytemnestra, and the father of Electra and Orestes. Mythical legends make him the king of Mycenae or Argos, thought to be different names for the same area...

 after the fall of Troy

Troy

Troy was a city, both factual and legendary, located in northwest Anatolia in what is now Turkey, southeast of the Dardanelles and beside Mount Ida...

 and then murdered by his wife, Clytemnestra

Clytemnestra

Clytemnestra or Clytaemnestra , in ancient Greek legend, was the wife of Agamemnon, king of the Ancient Greek kingdom of Mycenae or Argos. In the Oresteia by Aeschylus, she was a femme fatale who murdered her husband, Agamemnon – said by Euripides to be her second husband – and the Trojan princess...

, after his own death at her hands, an account by Dares the Phrygian sees her released by Agamemnon to live near Troy. This version, Tomlinson points out, was used by Chaucer for Troilus and Cressida

Troilus and Cressida

Troilus and Cressida is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1602. It was also described by Frederick S. Boas as one of Shakespeare's problem plays. The play ends on a very bleak note with the death of the noble Trojan Hector and destruction of the love between Troilus...

This second book sees a definite future established for the Moon Riders, whilst re-establishing and strengthening the ties between Myrina, Cassandra

Cassandra

In Greek mythology, Cassandra was the daughter of King Priam and Queen Hecuba of Troy. Her beauty caused Apollo to grant her the gift of prophecy...

, and Iphigenia.