Myrna

Set long before marble temples and emperors, explore a world of warrior women, terraforming dragons, an unspecified Librarian, a sentient donkey, and a group of friends seeking a future of self awakening in a stricken landscape and diminished cities.

This book is about Myrna, War Chief or Myrine for the city-state of Makriya's people. Following a volcanic eruption when she was a child, a chain reaction leads to changed weather, devastated crops, drought and plague that last for decades, and the results are depopulated lands. Conflicts between old allies see a world transformed as whole cities are destroyed, and leading the fight against ravenous invasions that follow chose her destiny for her. But what will her grandchildren choose?

Soaked up to her ears in blood, now Myrna is retired, and she has prepared the seeds for a new path forward for the tribes. Her world's memory is kept in song by poets, advanced memory workers, but this means that too many memories die with them, if their difficult training is not passed on. Now her grand-daughter is leaving home to discover a world changed by hunger and loss, who with new eyes, witnesses the land slowly coming to life again, as she seeks her own path in life. There's also an early 20th century Librarian, time-hopping witness to these events, which are stored in the crystalline memory of a tangible hologram Dragon, disguised as a human. This creature takes them back in time to search for clues that will help it leave the planet, but those who travel forward with it may not be any more free from slavery, than the ancient people whose memories lurk among.