The King Must Die

Theseus is raised in Troezen by his grandfather the king, believing the god Poseidon fathered him. On his seventeenth birthday the truth of his parentage is revealed, and he sets out across mainland Greece toward Athens and his mortal father, King Aegeus. Along the way he is crowned year-king of Eleusis, escapes ritual sacrifice, and finally sails to Crete, where he joins the bull-dancers of the Minoan court and confronts the labyrinth at its heart. Renault uses deep knowledge of archaeology and antiquity to offer grounded, human explanations for the Greek myths, turning the legend of Theseus into the coming-of-age of a real Bronze Age king.