conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide a description for a book titled The Hittite about Lukka, Hittite, Along with the genre: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction.. End with the sentence ' --Jay Freeman'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: the author is best known as a prolific writer of works of science fiction. Here he tries his hand at supposedly historical fiction, with interesting, enjoyable, but uneven results. Lukka, a Hittite warrior, returns to the Hittite capital city to find it engulfed in civil war, his father murdered, and his wife and two young sons taken away by slavers. Along with a small cadre of soldiers under his command, Lukka launches an epic search for his family, which leads him to the gates of Troy as it is beseiged by the army of Agamemnon. the author then proceeds to an original retelling of the final stages of the legendary Trojan War. In this account, Lukka serves as a literary mirror, revealing the personalities of some well-known characters, with a few surprising results. Odysseus, predictably, is practical, crafty, and a natural survivor in treacherous waters. Achilles is a born killer, but he is shown as short and ugly, and his death is decidedly unheroic. Helen is, of course, the babe of all babes, but she is also petty and whiny. the author tends to use flowery, descriptive language to excess, but he knows his Homer. --Jay Freeman
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide the first five paragraphs for this book.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Hittite
  Zeus now addressed the immortals: "What a lamentable thing it is that men should blame the gods and regard us as the source of their troubles when it is their own wickedness that brings them sufferings worse than any which Destiny allots them."
  The dreadful news reached us when we were less than a day's march from the capital, returning home after a long, hard campaign against the wily Armenians, in the mountains far to the north. The gods had turned their backs on our rightful emperor; he had been poisoned by his own scheming sons. Now, lusting for the power their father had wielded, the sons made war on one another.
  The empire of the Hatti stretched from beyond the twin peaks of Mount Ararat in the northeast to the shores of the Great Sea. Our armies sacked Babylon and fought the prideful Egyptians at Qadesh and Megiddo in the gaunt lands of Canaan. With swords of iron and discipline even stronger we conquered all that we encountered.
  Now Hattusas, our capital, had crumbled into chaos. Even before we reached its outer wall we could hear the tumult of terrified voices wailing to the gods for protection. It seemed as if the city's entire population was streaming out of the gates: white-bearded men, aged grandmothers, children wide-eyed with fear, whole families pushing carts loaded with their meager possessions, mothers with crying babies in their arms, all blindly fleeing. Smoke was rising from the citadel up on the hill in the center of the city, an ugly black plume staining the clouded sky.
  I knew what each of my men was thinking: what's happened to my family, my wife, my children, my mother and father? I felt that fear clutch at my own heart as we reached the city's main gate.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide two more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: As soon as Paris left Helen for the afternoon's fighting, donned once more in his gleaming armor, she summoned me to her. Since childhood I had been the one person she could confide in.
  I knew what was tearing at her heart. I should have realized it sooner; perhaps then I could have done something to help my dearest. Helen gazed at me with all the pain and bewilderment she felt brimming from her eyes. I could do nothing except hold out my arms to her. She burst into tears and ran to me.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide the last five paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: There was something in her voice, a questioning, a seeking. She lapsed into silence, her chin down, her eyes avoiding mine.
  Without thinking, without worrying about the consequences, I took her by the shoulders and pulled her to me. She buried her face in my chest, sobbing like a child. She wasn't the Queen of Sparta now, nor a princess of Troy. She was a frightened woman fleeing for her life, dependent on my protection. She was the most beautiful woman in the world and she was in my arms, trembling with fear, needing me as much as I wanted her.
  I got to my feet and lifted her into my arms and carried her to the wagon. There, amid the blankets and bags and boxes we made love. Not in a palace, not amid royal trappings on a beautifully decked wedding bed. On a cart that smelled of donkeys and sweat and the dust of long, hard travel.
  The stars peeked through the tattered clouds and Artemis' silver moon sank down behind the western hills while Helen and I made love, all other thoughts, all other cares, driven from my mind completely.
  But in the gray half-light that preceded true dawn, as Helen slept in my arms, I knew that I would cross deserts and rivers and mountains for this woman. That I would carry her to the ends of the earth to keep her safe, to protect her against the vengeful Menalaos.