King of Ithaca

By Steven Nemes

Odysseus, the infamous pirate and long-deposed king of Ithaca, has returned to Carthage. He means to rally Telemachus, his son, and Aeneas, the expatriate Trojan prince, to take back the palace at Ithaca from Agamemnon and Menelaus, the Achaean brother-kings who razed it twenty years earlier after their expedition to Troy failed without Odysseus's help.

For himself Odysseus wants revenge and for his son, the throne. But Telemachus and Aeneas reject his invitation. Telemachus has renounced all violence as a devotee of Eleos, the god of mercy, while Aeneas fears his fate will drag him away from Dido forever if he should leave the city. So Odysseus responds in the way he knows best: getting them onto his boat with a trick.

Discovering the trick only once they are too far out from shore to swim back, Telemachus and Aeneas realize they will have to survive this quest with an Odysseus they don't recognize anymore. He is visibly aged, guided by dreams, armed with a magic ring of unknown effect, having no plan, allies, no crew except a dozen inexperienced roughnecks, and more than anything obsessed with proving himself as a man and father.

A mysterious, action-packed adventure story about violence, fatherhood, and destiny, KING OF ITHACA asks the question: What if Odysseus had never gone to Troy?

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0FQNX94X1
• ISBN13: 9798264746567
• Release Date: September 2025
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 306 Pages
• Weight: 0.91 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"