Atlantis is one of those stories so deeply embedded in the imagination that it can be difficult to approach it without the weight of everything that has come before. We think of a lost civilisation, catastrophe, mystery and the irresistible possibility that somewhere beneath the myth there may have been a real place. In The Lady of Atlantis, Constantine takes that familiar legend and brings it back to human scale.
The novel is inspired by the archaeology of Akrotiri and by what the author describes as his own interpretations of Minoan writings, but its real strength lies in the attempt to imagine what such a world might have felt like from within. Thira is not presented merely as a doomed civilisation waiting to become archaeology. It is a living society, with its own beliefs, customs, relationships, expectations and hierarchies, inhabited by people who naturally assume that their world will continue.
At its centre is Sa-ra, a young priestess who has always heard voices. Within her culture this gives her a particular spiritual authority, yet the novel is interested in more than the mechanics of prophecy. Sa-ra’s gift is connected to intuition, judgement and an ability to perceive what other people sometimes cannot articulate for themselves. This gives the spiritual dimension of the book an appealing ambiguity. The author does not simply reduce ancient belief to superstition viewed through modern eyes, nor does he demand that everything be understood in straightforwardly supernatural terms. Instead, belief is allowed to exist as part of the fabric of Sa-ra’s world. That, for me, is one of the more interesting aspects of the novel. The prose has a deliberately simple, formal quality which suits Sa-ra’s world and helps maintain a sense of historical distance. There are moments when that register may require a little adjustment, particularly for younger readers, but it also prevents the setting from feeling overly modern. Importantly, it is balanced by humour, warmth and moments of very recognisable human behaviour.
Historical fiction about the ancient world can sometimes make its characters feel suspiciously contemporary. Here, there is a genuine attempt to imagine a society operating according to different assumptions. The place of women, religious practice, ideas about marriage and social responsibility are not treated simply as curiosities but as ordinary elements of Sa-ra’s experience. At the same time, the emotional concerns remain immediately recognisable. People love, doubt, worry, desire approval and try to understand what their futures might contain. In one early episode, a woman seeks Sa-ra’s guidance over which man she should marry. What matters about the scene is not the prediction itself, but Sa-ra’s understanding that prophecy cannot remove the uncertainty inherent in human relationships. Marriage, she recognises, will always contain both unforeseen hardship and unexpected happiness. It is characteristic of the book’s wider approach: grand ideas are repeatedly brought back to individual lives.
Of course, that becomes especially significant because the reader knows something the characters do not. The world of Thira is unstable. The mountain is stirring and catastrophe is approaching. Yet life continues around it. People make plans, form relationships and imagine futures. It is this contrast between the enormous scale of what is coming and the ordinary lives being lived beneath it that gives the story much of its poignancy. There is something particularly affecting about treating Atlantis not primarily as a mystery to be solved, but as a home that people believed was permanent.
The novel also raises interesting questions about the relationship between myth and history. Atlantis has accumulated centuries of speculation, reinvention and fantasy. By rooting his version in Thira and Akrotiri, the author imagines the legend as a possible echo of real experience: a prosperous society, a natural catastrophe and memories transformed in their transmission. We tend to encounter ancient civilisations after their stories have ended. We know which cities disappeared, which cultures changed and which disasters came. The people themselves possessed none of that hindsight. They experienced their lives forwards, surrounded by all the uncertainty, hope and expectation with which we experience our own. The Lady of Atlantis understands that distinction. Its most affecting idea is therefore also its simplest: before Atlantis became legend, it was somebody’s present. And Sa-ra’s world matters not because we know it will be lost, but because to her – and to everyone around her – it is still entirely alive.
Paul Taylor-McCartney is a writer, researcher and lecturer. His interests include dystopian literature, queer studies, YA fiction and initial teacher education. His poetry, short fiction and academic articles have appeared in a wide range of print and electronic media, and fiction titles he recently worked on as commissioning editor have won regional readers’ and publishers’ awards. His debut novel, Sisters of the Pentacle, was published by Hermitage Press in 2022, and his first non-fiction title, Cornwall Uncharted: Mapping Cornwall’s Queer History of Concealment, Culture and Creativity, was published by The History Press (June 2026).
You can read more about The Lady of Atlantis by Constantine on Creative Writing at Leicester here.
