A near-dead survivor, from a warband of initiates, limps back to the Great Tent, torn from head to toe. The wisest elder, goes white with fear - the cursed race of the Gods' First Born children has re-emerged from their frigid tomb to reclaim a world that was once theirs. Recruiting an outsider named Wolf, the warband regroups and sets out on a doomed passage to the lair of the preternatural hominids who massacred their kin. Wolf and his men rush against time and fate to solve the riddle of their doom and confront primordial demons that never died - only to be thwarted by the enervating seduction of the long-house and its Maven.
They believe their only hope lies in wielding a divine weapon of the 'Stony Skies' - the nature of which is as impenetrable to them as the will of their Gods.
THE TOLL OF FORTUNE is an historical retelling of one of the most foundational myths of Indo-European culture: mankind's attempt to quell the wrath of Chaos. The narrative sweeps across the Neolithic and Copper Age from the Don River to the Danube, and far beyond, invoking the primal rhythms of daily life of the first Indo-European people - cultural and genetic ancestors to nearly half the world's population. The doomed quest brings us face-to-face with our ancestors in a way that's both alarmingly familiar and deeply alien.
A PIONEER in the genre of PRE-HISTORICAL FICTION, A.J.R.Klopp treads the marches of human memory where historical reality yields to the wisdom and imagination of ancient peoples. It's evocative style takes the reader to a time when heroes were made, not born; when literature, high fantasy and history were mutually reinforcing; and when readers turned each page with the same excitement as our ancestors listened to the reciting of epic poetry around the fire.
THE TOLL OF FORTUNE is the first book to be published in A.J.R.Klopp's series The Thirteen Fathers a sequence of stories examining the genesis of myth and its historical origins in Indo-European culture.
