Dark Legend: A Novel

by Jamake Highwater

Few contemporary writers have been as prolific and wide-ranging as Jamake Highwater. From the perennially popular Myth and Sexuality and The Primal Mind to such landmark works on Native American arts as Ritual of the Wind and Songs from the Earth, to epic works of fiction like The Sun, He Dies and the Ghost Horse cycle, Highwater has been hailed as a visionary and a modern mythmaker.
In Dark Legend he has reimagined the mythic saga of the magic ring of the Nibelungen, one of the central legends in the European tradition and an endless source of inspiration for Western artists. Drawing on Wagner's cycle of Ring operas as well as ancient Eddic poems, the Icelandic Volsunga saga, and the Norse Nibelungenlied, Highwater lifts the story from its traditional setting in the high north and sets it down in the lush, tropical ancient Americas.
Blending realism and fantasy, the classic with the contemporary, Dark Legend is a postmodern mythic adventure - and another virtuoso performance from the daringly creative Jamake Highwater.

Genres: Mythology

245 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Jamake Highwater, born as Jackie Marks, and also known as Jay or J Marks (14 February 1931–June 3, 2001), was an American writer and journalist of eastern European Jewish ancestry.[1] From the late 1960s he claimed to be of Native American ancestry, specifically Cherokee. In that period, he published extensively under the name of Jamake Highwater. One version of his shifting story was that he had been adopted as a child and taken from his Indian home in Montana to grow up in a Greek or Armenian family in Los Angeles, California.

Reviews

[Mir · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a retelling of the story of the Ring of the Nibelungs. I mainly know this legend from Wagner's Ring Cycle and not from earlier mythology, so I can't say how much Highwater is making up from his own imagination. The author seems to write mostly non-fiction which may explain why, despite being described as an "adventure," this book isn't very exciting.