Raid, The by Eickhoff, Randy Lee - 1997

New York: Forge Book, Tom Dogherty Associates - St. Martin's Press, Dist.. Fine in Very Good dust jacket 1997. First Edition. Hardcover. Marfree, acidfree 1stEd; not written-in, underlined, reprint, remainder or ex-library. Mail SAMEDAY! ; 1.03 x 8.57 x 5.84; 282 pages; Kirkus Revs: The American author of thriller set in Ireland (The Gombeen Man1992) retells the greatest Irish tale of them all, the mythical Tain -the greatest tale in the sense that, as with the Iliad and the Odyssey in Greek literature, all Irish literature descends from it. Also known as the Tain Bo Cualigne, and, in English, as The Cattle Raid of Cooley, the epic concerns the rise of a hero, Cuchulainn, whose forebears were gods, and who even as a child was a mighty warrior. The story opens with a comic argument between the king and queen of Connacht, a powerful province in ancient Ireland. As the two lie in bed after making love, they take an elaborate inventory of their holdings, which are absolutely equal except that King Ailill owns a massive bull with mythic procreative powers. Queen Maeve, jealous, learns of another such bull in the weak neighboring province of Ulster and musters her armies to captur .