What do you think?
Rate this book
The Early Erthe Chronicles
Atlantos
Inspired by the writings of Plato 12,000 years in the past… On two primeval sister-planets two magnificent civilizations hurtle towards their cataclysmic destinies. Poseidon and Athens Ra are the two rival brothers who govern them. They possess advanced technos and all-too-human passions. Are they gods or are they men? Level-headed Terresian explorer and scientist Poseidon Ra commands an expedition to Erthe where a routine genetic protocol on the aboriginal population has unexpectedly triggered a staggering leap in human evolution. He quickly realizes that he's traveled 940 million miles across the solar system only to fall in love with a planet…and its exceptionally advanced, exquisite native daughter. Sensualist and bad boy Athens Ra has been tasked with governing the mining colony of Mars - a life- sustaining mission crucial to the survival of the home world. The drilling spawns riches beyond imagining, and enemies that are the stuff of nightmares. One brother discovers a love that will change the course of history, the other…monsters, madness and death.
Paperback
First published July 7, 2015
6 people are currently reading
426 people want to read
About the author
Robin Maxwell
36 books397 followersRobin Maxwell began writing novels about the historical figures she had been obsessing about since graduating from Tufts University with a degree in Occupational Therapy. Her first novel, "The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn," now in its 24th printing, won two YA awards and has been translated into fourteen languages. "The Wild Irish" - an epic tale of Ireland's rebel queen, Grace O'Malley - closed out her Elizabethan Quartet, and is now in development for a television series. "Signora Da Vinci" and "Jane: The Woman Who loved Tarzan" are tales of the remarkable women behind two of the world's most beloved wildmen - Maestro Leonardo and Lord Greystoke. She has jumped genres again with "ATLANTOS," now a #1 Amazon Bestseller. Robin lives with her husband of thirty-five years, Max Thomas, at High Desert Eden, a wildlife sanctuary in the Mojave Desert.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
January 17, 2016
I picked this up (on sale) because I was under the impression it was a sci fi book. I was thoroughly disappointed. While it does contain some elements of sci fi, it reads more like a soap opera, following the story of one family with little dramas here and there but no real interesting event to wrap it all up. I was so bored I just wanted to quit reading, but my OCD wouldn't let me not finish the book. I will not be reading any sequels.
September 24, 2015
Absolutely loved it. I cannot wait for the second book. I ended up buying the audio book and the authors other books because it will be a difficult wait.
May 7, 2018
"The world, as Poseidon knew it, was coming undone." (Xi)
I would like to thank Robin Maxwell for providing me with a copy of this book.
This book was very well written and easy to follow. However, I found it missing a lot of action, which would have made this book so much better. There was a good amount of family drama which kept it interesting.
This book was a medium read, as I read it in about 2 days!
I would recommend it to any sci-fi lover!
I would like to thank Robin Maxwell for providing me with a copy of this book.
This book was very well written and easy to follow. However, I found it missing a lot of action, which would have made this book so much better. There was a good amount of family drama which kept it interesting.
This book was a medium read, as I read it in about 2 days!
I would recommend it to any sci-fi lover!
September 9, 2015
I loved to read about Atlantis when I was a teenager, but stopped because of the unbelievability of the scenarios, such as humans breeding with aliens and producing viable offspring. When I read the reviews for this book and saw that readers praised the believability, I was eager to read Atlantos.
Maxwell does indeed believably solve the genetics problem and several others in the traditional story of Atlantis (such as its epic destruction) in this historical science fiction novel.
Her prime source is Plato, who described Atlantis in Timaeus and Critias, so it's only fitting that she structures the story as a classic Greek tragedy. The heroes are two brothers, Poseidon and Athens. Both are handsome, charming, talented, daring, smart, and well-educated. But each suffers from a fatal flaw. Poseidon, the older, suffers from the classical flaw of ὕβρις; Athens is wildly jealous of his older brother. We don't see how these fatal flaws dooms each (the story continues in another novel, not yet published), but knowing that doom is coming for each and that the story of Atlantis has an unhappy ending adds tension throughout the story.
I won't spoil that story for you, because much of the fun of this book is seeing how Maxwell creates a surprising explanation of Atlantis within the confines of Plato's narrative.
You do need to know that Maxwell's Atlantis lies where part of Indonesia is today. I partly ruined the book for myself by assuming Atlantis was somewhere in lands known to the ancient world and by using various clues to guess its location. When the people find iron nearby, I assumed they are in Turkey. But no—modern horses live nearby; they must be on the Eurasian steppes. They have cotton —> India. Turkeys —> the Americas. Einkorn and emmer —> the Levant. Light-skinned people —> Europe. And so on. You can understand how confused I was.
It's never explained how non-native plants and animals got to Indonesia, but given that the three geological shelves of Indonesia are now deep under water, the reader can devise any explanation that satisfies her, and it can't be disproved.
This is an old-fashioned science fiction tale. By that I mean:
—It's a space adventure with a lot of technology.
—The two brothers try to create utopias on different planets.
—It focuses on making the hard science believable, but not the social sciences; I often found the organization of groups and the human behavior, especially the relationships between men and women, at odds with my training as an anthropologist.
—Rarely do characters discuss the ethics of imposing technology without informed consent.
—Colonization is assumed to be a good, not an evil.
—Civilization and advanced technology are seen as unequivocally good, rather than fragile systems dependent on complex infrastructure with millions of pieces susceptible to failure and disastrous results. Somehow Poseidon doesn't know that hunting-gathering is far more sustainable a lifestyle than living in cities or practicing agriculture. In fact, despite his good education and access to advanced computer databases, Poseidon knows almost nothing about how small, isolated cities and small-scale tech work. He makes the people mine coal to get carbon to make steel, even though burning wood is an easier, faster, and safer method. He has the people build stone houses with no seismic-resistant structural features even though this region is rife with volcanoes and earthquakes. And so on. (One might view these actions more charitably as demonstrations of his fatal flaw of hubris: Either he doesn't research these things or he ignores the vast data he has access to because he thinks he knows better.)
—The male gaze is prominent, sometimes even when the point-of-view character is a woman. In a related vein, in most hunter-gatherer societies, women bring in most of the food and take part in many more activities than men, yet Atlantos spends a lot of time showing the leisure and hunting activities of the men and their interactions, while we learn little of how the women interact or spend their days.
—The one woman who challenges the status quo earns status in part by being skilled at "male" activities rather than by her skill in women's roles.
—Jealousy over a man is the primary motivation of an otherwise rational woman scientist.
If you like old-fashioned sf, you are used to the above and will probably very much enjoy this novel.
Although I was put off by the ahistorical sexism and the assumption that the exploitation of people who are less technologically advanced is justified, I still care enough about the characters to want to know what happens to them, and I plan to get the sequel when it is available.
Many science fiction and fantasy writers—including Urusla LeGuin, Robert Silverberg, Kim Stanley Robinson, H.N. Turteltaub (Harry Turtledove), Poul Anderson, A.A, Attanasio, Brian Aldiss, L. Sprague de Camp, Norman Spinrad, Orson Scott Card, Cecilia Holland, Steven Barnes, and myself—have tried their hands at realistic historical fiction. It's far less common for historical fiction authors to try sf; only Michael Chabon comes to mind. I commend Maxwell for giving the world a sf story of Atlantis.
I received a free copy of this novel in exchange for an unbiased review.
Maxwell does indeed believably solve the genetics problem and several others in the traditional story of Atlantis (such as its epic destruction) in this historical science fiction novel.
Her prime source is Plato, who described Atlantis in Timaeus and Critias, so it's only fitting that she structures the story as a classic Greek tragedy. The heroes are two brothers, Poseidon and Athens. Both are handsome, charming, talented, daring, smart, and well-educated. But each suffers from a fatal flaw. Poseidon, the older, suffers from the classical flaw of ὕβρις; Athens is wildly jealous of his older brother. We don't see how these fatal flaws dooms each (the story continues in another novel, not yet published), but knowing that doom is coming for each and that the story of Atlantis has an unhappy ending adds tension throughout the story.
I won't spoil that story for you, because much of the fun of this book is seeing how Maxwell creates a surprising explanation of Atlantis within the confines of Plato's narrative.
You do need to know that Maxwell's Atlantis lies where part of Indonesia is today. I partly ruined the book for myself by assuming Atlantis was somewhere in lands known to the ancient world and by using various clues to guess its location. When the people find iron nearby, I assumed they are in Turkey. But no—modern horses live nearby; they must be on the Eurasian steppes. They have cotton —> India. Turkeys —> the Americas. Einkorn and emmer —> the Levant. Light-skinned people —> Europe. And so on. You can understand how confused I was.
It's never explained how non-native plants and animals got to Indonesia, but given that the three geological shelves of Indonesia are now deep under water, the reader can devise any explanation that satisfies her, and it can't be disproved.
This is an old-fashioned science fiction tale. By that I mean:
—It's a space adventure with a lot of technology.
—The two brothers try to create utopias on different planets.
—It focuses on making the hard science believable, but not the social sciences; I often found the organization of groups and the human behavior, especially the relationships between men and women, at odds with my training as an anthropologist.
—Rarely do characters discuss the ethics of imposing technology without informed consent.
—Colonization is assumed to be a good, not an evil.
—Civilization and advanced technology are seen as unequivocally good, rather than fragile systems dependent on complex infrastructure with millions of pieces susceptible to failure and disastrous results. Somehow Poseidon doesn't know that hunting-gathering is far more sustainable a lifestyle than living in cities or practicing agriculture. In fact, despite his good education and access to advanced computer databases, Poseidon knows almost nothing about how small, isolated cities and small-scale tech work. He makes the people mine coal to get carbon to make steel, even though burning wood is an easier, faster, and safer method. He has the people build stone houses with no seismic-resistant structural features even though this region is rife with volcanoes and earthquakes. And so on. (One might view these actions more charitably as demonstrations of his fatal flaw of hubris: Either he doesn't research these things or he ignores the vast data he has access to because he thinks he knows better.)
—The male gaze is prominent, sometimes even when the point-of-view character is a woman. In a related vein, in most hunter-gatherer societies, women bring in most of the food and take part in many more activities than men, yet Atlantos spends a lot of time showing the leisure and hunting activities of the men and their interactions, while we learn little of how the women interact or spend their days.
—The one woman who challenges the status quo earns status in part by being skilled at "male" activities rather than by her skill in women's roles.
—Jealousy over a man is the primary motivation of an otherwise rational woman scientist.
If you like old-fashioned sf, you are used to the above and will probably very much enjoy this novel.
Although I was put off by the ahistorical sexism and the assumption that the exploitation of people who are less technologically advanced is justified, I still care enough about the characters to want to know what happens to them, and I plan to get the sequel when it is available.
Many science fiction and fantasy writers—including Urusla LeGuin, Robert Silverberg, Kim Stanley Robinson, H.N. Turteltaub (Harry Turtledove), Poul Anderson, A.A, Attanasio, Brian Aldiss, L. Sprague de Camp, Norman Spinrad, Orson Scott Card, Cecilia Holland, Steven Barnes, and myself—have tried their hands at realistic historical fiction. It's far less common for historical fiction authors to try sf; only Michael Chabon comes to mind. I commend Maxwell for giving the world a sf story of Atlantis.
I received a free copy of this novel in exchange for an unbiased review.
June 16, 2017
Good story, but what about Atantis❓The book just end.... to be continued.
Bid disappointing. Read 500 pages for what❓
Bid disappointing. Read 500 pages for what❓
April 22, 2018
good story... kept my attention... entertaining. Its an interesting world and an interesting world view. I liked it.
October 18, 2015
EPIC. That's the word I want to use about this book, the first of a series. Call it science fiction or historical fantasy...Robin Maxwell says that she was inspired by the writings of Plato. Was there a great civilization in the past which was destroyed? Maxwell says, "yes," and gives us the amazing story of the founding of the first civilization on Earth, "Atlantos."
I found myself caught up in the story with its great characters--the two brothers Poseidon and Athens, and the magnificent woman, Cleatah.
Can't wait for the second part.
I found myself caught up in the story with its great characters--the two brothers Poseidon and Athens, and the magnificent woman, Cleatah.
Can't wait for the second part.
February 24, 2016
Alantos is an excellent read, great characters, and a plausible plot. An excellent speculative fiction on the origins of Atlantas and the people who ushered the colony into existence. Maxwell explains complex science in terms that are realistic and interesting. Her prose is smooth, paced with action and emotion.
May 31, 2022
Interesting take on an origins story.
June 12, 2021
uh-mazing!
January 3, 2018
couldn't finish it. Disappointed.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews