Raptor

Thorn grows up outside ordinary categories of gender and social belonging in the fragmented world of the late Western Roman Empire. Driven from religious communities and uncertain of his origins, Thorn travels through Gothic, Roman and eastern territories, sometimes living as a man and sometimes using a female identity. Friendship with the veteran Wyrd and eventual service to Theodoric draw the wandering narrator into the military and diplomatic struggles of the Ostrogoths.

The novel incorporates the deposition of Romulus Augustulus, Odoacer’s rule in Italy and Emperor Zeno’s decision to direct Theodoric west. Campaigns at the end of the fifth century lead to the siege of Ravenna and Theodoric’s killing of Odoacer in 493. Through Thorn’s deliberately unstable memoir, the story examines identity, belief and political survival during the transition from Roman imperial government to the Ostrogothic Kingdom.