Frequently asked questions: What is the book about?

Leaving aside the characters and character arcs of the book and the storyline, Gods Before Kings is about the period of history where civilisation experiences its first major growth.

The first true agricultural revolution frees the majority of the population from farming and that freed up labour is then used to form dedicated industries and a work force to build the city.

No one at the time would have known where this would end up. They would not have known that the expansion in population and specialised industry would result in the cities and nations of today.

The book chooses the time where the city was still small enough for everyone to know each other and the temple priests to have complete control.

The simplest administration for this time would have been communal sharing of resources and food controlled by the temple. There was no money and only basic writing to cover trade between other cities.

This is really what the book is about. Here we had the best of both worlds, the benefits to standard of living through what we now call capitalism and the communal advantages of socialism.

I tried as hard as I could to use the research I did of this time to create that world in the pages of the book.

Then I added the vectors that we know that occurred next. Population growth was inevitable and with it the fragmentation of the once cohesive group. That fragmentation allowed men to challenge the temple. The temple grew weaker as the population became to large.

At the same time trade and workshop production became inefficient under the control of the temple. Methods to conduct business needed to improve to allow trade between entities that did not know each other.

But all that aside, the main message I hope to convey in this novel is that this was a special time in our history. It would have been a brief period. The seeds of its downfall were literally in the fruits of its success.

It is little wonder to me that its citizens believed the gods that lived in their city were responsible for what they saw happening around them. It would have been miraculous at a minimum, and more likely astounding.

So that is what the book is really about. An amazing time in our history marking the beginning of where our civilisation has professed to in the current day.

The internet is impressive. Large tubes of metal flying through the air or even into space carrying passengers seems almost impossible. Complex systems of democracy and law give many around the world freedom.

Despite all this, the story of where this all began back on the Sumerian plains seems more significant.

And that is why I wrote the book.