Circle of Days is set in 2500 BCE, where four distinct communities, the herders, farmers, woodlanders and the priestess, live across the Great Plain. At the heart of their world stands the Monument, a sacred gathering place where they come together every year for the Rite. People from many villages come to trade food, clothing, tools and livestock near the ring of timber pillars. The Monument is not just a holy place but a site of ritual, storytelling, feasts and sun worship. It preserves the community’s knowledge of the sky and anchors their way of life.
But harmony collapses when drought strikes. Desperation turns neighbours into enemies, violence replaces peace and the Monument burns. Priestess Joia becomes determined to rebuild it in stone, believing that pleasing the Sun God may restore order and secure her rise as High Priestess. The scale of the undertaking is immense. It takes more than two hundred people to move a single sarsen stone and the workforce is already stretched thin. Their struggle to keep the mission alive forms the core of the story.
I was excited when I picked up this book, but at times I felt disappointed. The portrayal of certain sexual orientations felt repetitive and exaggerated, which pulled me out of the narrative. At nearly seven hundred pages, the story explores the desperation of survival and the complexity of human nature, though I expected more from this author. Still, it is an easy read with a conversational style. It even left me wondering whether horses existed in that era at all. 😅