Dark Legend

by Jamake Highwater

A retelling of the mythic saga of the magic ring of the Nibelungen, transplanted to the lush, tropical pre-Columbian Americas following the myth's female characters and spotlighting the conflict between nature and culture.

Genres: Mythology

256 pages, Paperback

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.