Iliona is "persuaded" to work with the Spartan secret service on a mission to Syracuse to prove that it was not Spartans who slaughtered Syracuse's herd of cavalry horses. But then members of the team start dying.

A disappointment. The frequent references to a serpent in paradise were too reminiscent of Christianity to work as the musings of a Spartan priestess or the villain despite a belated attempt to tie it in with Greek mythology. The Claudia Seferius series was much better. ( )