A retelling of the myth of Romulus and Remus, and an expansion of an earlier novella, 'Where is the Bird of Fire?' This is a sequel to the author's 'Green Phoenix' - in it, Mellonia, dryad, and former queen of the dryads, now lives alone in the forest following the deaths of her people, some from age, some from other natural causes and some from the depredations of humankind. The centaurs are all gone, rounded up for the entertainment of humans - in a Roman-style circus (the kind where people and animals fought to the death), although Rome is not yet founded as the story begins - and the fauns are in decline, able to breed only with the few human women who will accept them now that the dryads are gone.

The book is told from the alternate viewpoints of Mellonia and Sylvan, a young faun who is captured in a raid by Remus and his shepherds, but rescued by his gentler brother, Remus. The town, founded about four hundred years ago by Mellonia's first lover, Aeneas, and his son Ascanius, her second lover, is now ruled by a cruel tyrannt who has deposed the elderly king (who is the descendant of Ascanius by his human wife). Mellonia witnesses the burying alive of the king's daughter, a Vestal Virgin who has given birth to boys, whom she insists are the sons of Mars, and she assists with their rescue. In legend (I had a vague idea of the story of the origin of Rome and the saving of the twin boys by a she-wolf), the boys are suckled by the wolf until found by a shepherd but in this, although they are fed wolf's milk initially by Mellonia, the milk is brought from a nursing wolf and the young she-wolf she leaves at the shepherd's door with the babies is not the wolf who donated the milk. Nevertheless, when the story switches to when they are young men, and Sylvan enters the story, everyone believes that the now-elderly wolf was their first mother.

The story follows their plans to take back the town from the tyrannt, although it is Romulus, the more aggressive of the two, who actively pursues this course and trains a body of men, including murderers. Remus, meanwhile, is more interested in making friends with animals and bees, and, when he meets Mellonia, in becoming her lover. Sylvan is at first hurt by what he sees as his exclusion, but he and Mellonia do eventually become friends. There is also the rather odd interlude which is apparently based on 'Lost Horizon' etc with Japanese elements.

As I anticipated, the story did not have a happy ending and seems to be the final death knell of the Wildwood and its mythical creatures. The writing is fairly accomplished, but I didn't really enjoy it. And in the first section, I kept expecting Mellonia to arrange for the mother to be dug out since she was walled up in a space with an air tube, to suffer death by thirst. Even if this is according to the legend on which it is based, there was enough 'play' with other elements of the legend for her to have been rescued and to have helped raised her sons, even if she was then killed off conveniently afterwards.

I also found the cover of this edition rather odd - given that Mellonia is four feet tall, and green with pointed ears, although beautiful, and there is no other character approximating the skimpily clad woman on the cover, it can only be another example of exploitative 1970s book covers. Anyway, I can only award this an OK 2 stars. ( )