Review of Clarion of Midnight by Kristina O'Donnelly

A story plunged into the past  also capable to predict the future. I am discussing about Clarion of Midnight: Megali Idea

, the second novel of the  Lands of the Morning series written by awarded author Kristina O’ Donnelly. Also, this novel has been written in English and, since the author (born in Rome and resident in the USA) lived in Ireland and Turkey, also, I hope a version in another language will published soon. Clarion of Midnight is the sequel of The Horseman, a book that, on balance, opens the series of Lands of The Morning. The series consists of a total of six books you can also read singularly, thanks to the completeness of the writing style and of the plot of each of them. However, Clarion of Midnight represents the superb achievement  of a love and power story begun with the Horseman. While in the first volume, the author tells about the love story between an American girl and a Turkish journalist, in the second book, the two have been married for many years  and have a daughter and two sons,  one of these sons is illegitimate because the husband has had him from an extramarital affair. Set in the Turkey of the 1980s. Clarion of Midnight, besides being an evocative novel, is also a work who offers many clues on the things which would be happened in the following years.  For this reason, readers can also define it predictive. And what does this novel foretell? More than predict,   let us say the novel tells how the seeds of the future financial crisis and social injustice (made of rich getting richer and the poor get poorer, before our eyes) were launched. The novel, I said, has been set in the 1980s, during the government of the so called Iron Lady, namely Margaret Thatcher. At that time,  the world was in the grip of several international troubles. Western governments had to keep an eye on  the relationships between Greece and Turkey,  eternally on fight to prevail one against the other.  Centuries of  struggles didn’t wipe out the grudge between two different nations,  too tied to the past, that have difficult to conform to the present.  And in this background, the character who summarizes in herself these contradictions is Anika, a lustful Greek woman who got wealth  and power because she married the heir of a billionaire descendant of the Empire Byzantine. Born poor, this beautiful by now fifty years woman  redeems her former poverty by seducing and manipulating men and cultivating the idea to extend the power of the Byzantine Empire to Turkey. To fall into her enchanting and harmful web,  it is also Mark, an American archaeologist seeking for the precious treasure of  Chatalhoyuk, an archaeological zone out of Turkey, whose the finds are at the Museum in Israel. It is for this exotic and compelling plot that author makes the different origins and diversities of East and the West meet and clash.  Difference and diversity take the shape of intrigues and power games in the book. Sex, power and international conspiracies are not only the ingredients of the novel, but also the causes of the problems many people often have to face unbeknownst to them.  This theory is proven by another character of the novel, ambiguous Interior Minister of Turkey Burhan, who worked as a journalist in The Horseman. After marrying an American girl,  the Minister is very tied to her daughter Leyla, a rebel teenager who falls in love with archaeologist Mark. Burhan is a strong and weak man at the same time,  merciless with his enemies and betrayers and as shy as a child with his old and authoritarian mother. He is alleged for the massacres of rebels and even for the tortures and the rapes of his prisoners. He is also suspected of torturing and raping his prisoners by himself with the purpose to force them to confess.  In short, between the adultery and the sexual crimes  of a politician, it is displayed the tragedy of a people who, believing to be free, ends up to be more and more oppressed by a violent dictatorship. The book plot also reminds me the novel by Oriana Fallaci “ A Man”, set in Greek during the dictatorship of the Colonels. But, in Clarion of Midnight, you sense a more international background that embraces several people and habits: Turks, Kurds, Syrians, Iraqis  and Jews, in a large community of cultures and beliefs that will result into all of the dramatic vicissitudes of our contemporary world, such as: terrorism, economic crisis,  massive migrations. In this environment, I think  the title of the book has a double meaning:  clarion means “ squillo” in Italian and in the novel, it can represent  both the beginning of a new age and the sound of the call to arms.  In the same background, they are displayed  the spectacular landscape of Istanbul, the crystal waters of the Aegean and the Bosphore sight, the strict that divides  East from the West,  an exciting  watershed  of that exotic and unforgettable environment just described and told in Clarion of Midnight. Notice: this review  has been translated into English from the one in Italian published  on an important Italian literary forum: http://www.forumlibri.com/forum/piccola-biblioteca/21215-o-donnelly-kristina-clarion-midnight-megali-idea.html#post414827. If you liked this review, share on the social networks and buy Clarion of Midnight Moreover, if you are an author who needs book promotion, submit your book here.