Eskkar & Trella: The Beginning — Sam Barone

Eskkar & Trella â€" The Beginning (645 pages) â€" is the latest novel in Sam Barone's five part series, a bronze age historical saga in the tradition of Conn Iggulden, Bernard Cornwell and Jean Auel.

In Dawn of Empire, Eskkar the warrior and Trella the keen-witted slave girl come together in a mighty struggle to survive a barbarian invasion and build mankind's first walled city.

But Eskkar's story began many years earlier, when his family was brutally murdered in a blood feud. His name and heritage obliterated, young Eskkar flees his clan and the only life he knows. Condemned as an outcast, he learns to survive, hunted by his own kind, and hated and feared by all others.

For fifteen years, Eskkar wanders the Land Between The Rivers, home of his hereditary enemies, fighting to stay alive and to reach manhood. All the while he is learning the skills that will one day make him not only a true warrior, but a leader of men on and off the battlefield.

Trella, too, witnesses her family destroyed in a single night of vengeance, and her life of ease and privilege lost. Captured and sold to a slave trader, she must use her keen mind, extraordinary perception, and perfect memory to regain control of her life. While appearing to serve her masters, Trella learns to manipulate the powerful men who now own her body. Soon she becomes the unseen influence whose knowledge and training guide the way to the founding of an empire.

Eskkar and Trella join together and form a unique bond that enables them to overcome the limits their world has placed upon them.

These are the stories of their journeys toward one another and to their shared destiny â€" an enduring love that changes civilization forever.