New 5-Star Review of Beneath the Mountain of Heavy Fear

Once again Marva Dasef has come through with a great review of the 4th volume of The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head.  Marva writes MG/YA books that I find very enjoyable. The Witches of Galdorheim (trilogy) is my favorite, but Setara's Genie is absolutely a lot of fun, and among her other books are a mystery and a series of tales about a boy growing up in Texas in an earlier era.  Most of her books are available in audio form as well as print and ebook.  Find them at Amazon and at Smashwords, plus other online retailers. 

 

Here Is Her Review!
      

Epic and unforgettable!

       The 4th volume of the Labors of Ki'shto'ba the warrior termite. In this book, Ki'shto'ba and its friends find the prophesied 9th and 10th members of the companions.
       Ki'shto'ba literally must enter Hell (and I know what literally means) to face his past and forgive himself for its self-perceived crimes. Led by an unusual alate bard, Bu'gan'zei, Ki'shto'ba faces some of those he killed and answers the right question.
       As the companions continue their journey to the ocean, the 10th companion turns out to be a fractious intercaste (mixed breed) who is both alate and warrior. The mystery of the prophecy of her origin is cleared up, and the journey continues.
       None of this will make much sense to you unless you've read the previous three volumes. I consider it well worth your time to do so. I'm looking forward to the 5th volume. Alas, I have so many other books I must read first.

[A parenthetical comment: v.5 (The Wood Where the Two Moons Shine) is written but hasn't been published yet.  It will come within a few months.]

       I've become a fan of Lorinda Taylor's complex alien termite tales. If you'd asked me before I read the first of her books if I'd want to twist my brain around names like Ki'shto'ba or Di'fra'kro'mi, I would have said it was unlikely for me to get so involved with these people.
       If you haven't read any of the Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head books, you might want to start your journey with the intelligent alien termites with "The Termite Queen." The presence of human interpreters allows readers to become familiar with the alien world.
       These books are epic in scope. No doubt because Ms. Taylor uses human mythology as the framework. Translating myth to an alien world isn't a new technique, but these books have so much depth to them you never feel you're reading some Disneyesque retelling, but a truly serious experience. But the humor of the characters comes through as well to lighten the tale.
       Highly recommended. Matter of fact, I'm going to break my general rule of no more than 4 stars because I can't wait to read volume 5 and beyond.

 

Thanks, Marva!  I really appreciate it!

 



The Valley of Thorns: A 5-Star Review!

Back Cover, The Valley of Thorns
Feel free to print this!

       The prolific Marva Dasef (her Amazon Page) has now read and reviewed all three volumes (to date) of my series The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head.  She gave this one 5 stars, and she doesn't dole out that many stars regularly.  If you want to read something of hers, I recommend The Witches of Galdorheim (see my review of the first volume, Bad Spelling).

       I'm not too worried about the spoilers, because if you recognize the medieval epic on which I based this story (and I've talked about that elsewhere), you'll know the outcome anyway.

 

Now here is Marva's review of The Valley of Thorns:

 

SOME SPOILERS HERE

       Given that I read and enjoyed the first two volumes of this epic series, I had no trepidations jumping into the third volume of the story of Ki'shto'ba and his doughty band of companions.

       Di'fa'kro'mi the Remembrancer (equivalent of a bard or story teller) having invented a written form of the termite language narrates the tale. In the first volume (the Battle for the Stolen Mother), we find Di'fa'kro'mi as an elderly person narrating the story to his scribe. Occasionally, Di'fa'kro'mi breaks out of the narrative to explain a few things to the scribe which were not directly observed by the Remembrancer. I liked these sections since the first person narrative would obviously not cover events where Di'fra'kro'mi was not present.

       In this volume, the companions travel to the Marcher lands where a war is on-going with another tribe of Shshi. The dispute is over religion, a common reason for war. Since Ki'shto'ba's twin, A'zhu'lo had become attached to the Marcher overlord, the Huge-Head reluctantly joins the Marcher side. Going into the Valley of the Thorns to aid a Marcher outpost, the war heats up. A truce is proposed, and the opposing Shshi even say they will switch their method of worship of the Great Mother in accordance with the Marcher beliefs. Unfortunately, it's a ruse with one of the Marcher generals becoming a turncoat.

       The subsequent battle when the traitor is discovered is bloody and vicious. Ki'shto'ba had been leading the way out of the Valley of the Thorns leaving its twin in the rear guard, which was totally destroyed.

       The death of his twin drives Ki'shto'ba mad and it ends up killing innocents in the heat of his insanity. This parallels the story of Hercules' madness and murders for which he must atone with the 12 labors. In the earlier volumes, Ki'shto'ba had already been set on the task of performing 12 wonders.

       I'm going on too long here and possibly introducing too many spoilers, so I'll end the description of the events (maybe I should be a Remembrancer myself).

       Again, I highly recommend this epic story. There are three volumes more according to Ms. Taylor. I will meet them head on and, hopefully, not be driven mad in the process of following the complex names, titles, objects, and places served to the reader in the Shshi language. By the end of the tale, I might very well have a working vocabulary of the marvelous con-lang (constructed language), Ms. Taylor has so carefully developed.

       Definitely start with volume 1 of the tale (you might also want to take on the Termite Queen first since Ki'shto'ba is first introduced in that series.

       Amazingly complex, yet solid storytelling. And, yes, I got misty-eyed at the death of A'zhu'lo. Is that a spoiler too?

A Fine Review of The War of the Stolen Mother

Ki'shto'ba Stands Guard

Here is the text of a very positive  review of v.1 of the series The Labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head.  I think it captures the essence of what I set out to do in the series.  The review  is by Marva Dasef, author of a number of entertaining MG and YA books including the 3-volume The Witches of Galdorheim, which you can find on Amazon or on Smashwords.

Epic Tale of War and Honor

This is the first volume in a series following the labors of Ki'shto'ba Huge-Head, a warrior of the Shshi race of intelligent termite-like people. It is set on an alien (to humans) world described in an earlier multi-volume novel covering the discovery of the world by humans. In the first book, the point of view is primarily that of Kaitrin Oliva, a human linguistic anthropologist who decodes the Shshi language.

This next multi-volume novel has no humans, only the termites. It's an epic tale told as if narrator Di'fa'kro'mi the Remembrancer is dictating it to his scribe long after the events of the story. This is an effective means of narration because it allows for asides and personal thoughts of Di'fa'kro'mi about the story. I found it amusing when Di'fa comments how he used a bit of literary trickery to describe events happening elsewhere. That is, Di'fa invents a point of view shift. Clever of the author to come right out with it before I made a note about the "POV SHIFT!" Ms. Taylor uses multiple literary devices to get around some of the obstacles a termite might have recording a story for others to read, not just listen to in the oral tradition of the Remembrancers.

This novel is steeped in earth mythos from the role of Di'fa as the Homer of the Shshi to the obvious comparison of Ki'sh to both Ulysses and Hercules of Greek myth, the war with Troy, and a lot of other references I probably missed.

It's a really long first volume, but I'm almost getting used to Ms. Taylor's monolithic multi-volume novels. You certainly get plenty of words for your 99 cents (the price may have changed) and all of them quite necessary to the story. I will always have a problem with the names and the other con-lang (constructed language) features, but this one is footnoted for the most part. As for the names, there's a handy cast of characters and places at the beginning of the book.

What did I love about the book? Lots. The epic sweep of the story (and this is only the first volume of Ki'shto'ba's travels). The warrior is as knightly and honorable as any of King Arthur's court. The brotherly love between Ki'shto'ba and his twin brother, A'zhu'lo (highly unusual in the termite world) is touching and real. I quite enjoyed the antics of Za'dut the trickster outcast who just can't keep his claws off others' property. While playing the clown, he turns out to be quite clever and, at his heart, cares as much for the companions as any of the others.

I think what I want to say is that this novel is deeply and touchingly human although the termite practices are entirely unhuman. The concepts of honor, love, grief, fear, jubilation, caring are all there and I truly believed them.

Well done, very well written, squeaky clean grammar and spelling. Ms. Taylor has made me a fan of the termites even if I can't always remember who's who with the secondary characters. I didn't have a problem remembering the companions who travel on this epic journey.


Thanks for the nice words, Marva!  I hope other readers will be inspired to give my books a try!  The ebooks will remain at 99 cents through Cyber Monday, Dec. 2, 2013 (only $2.99 thereafter) at Amazon and at Smashwords, but remember that as a Christmas present, a print book looks much better wrapped under the tree!  Besides, if you buy a paperback, you can get the Kindle version FREE under Amazon's MatchBook program!  And one more bonus:  with a paperback you get extra features, like a map and extra illustrations on the back covers.

 

Trolls!

The following is an excerpt from a blog post of August 27, 2013.
by Marva Dasef, author of YA and MG fiction.

 To read the entire piece go here. 

Thanks, Marva, for allowing me to repost it!

 

Look at them, troll mother said. Look at my sons!
You won't find more beautiful trolls on this side of the moon.
Illustration of Walter Stenström's The boy and the trolls or The Adventure
in childrens' anthology Among pixies and trolls, 1915.
(Wikipedia, public domain)

 

There Be Trolls Here!

 

       I spent the last few days in Seattle.  ...  Another site I wanted to take in is the famous troll under the bridge in Seattle. Although we had lived on the east side for several years, we didn't go to the main city much. Somehow I managed to never visit the troll.
       Since my series, Witches of Galdorheim, has trolls all over it, I have a natural interest in the subject. I decided to post about my trolls as introduced in "Bad Spelling."

 

       Trolls. What do you imagine? Maybe something like the big ugly pictured here. In my Witches of Galdorheim series, I wanted a cave-dwelling bunch of uglies, but dwarves didn’t seem right for my book. Then I started hearing music inside my head. You know how that goes, right? It builds and builds until it has you screaming in frustration, willing to even listen to some other music to at least swap the tormenting sound.

       But before I could find a MP3 file of "Henry the VIIIth" by Herman’s Hermits, I stopped and listened. My muse was whacking me in the head via earworm. The music was Grieg’s Hall of the Mountain King from the Peer Gynt Suite. Duh. Trolls.

       Despite the canards on trolls from the likes of Artemis Fowl or Pratchett’s Discworld, I thought they could be heroic if given sufficient ale.

       From the Free Dictionary/Encyclopedia:

       A troll is a fearsome member of a mythical race from Norse mythology. Originally more or less the Nordic equivalents of giants, although often smaller in size, the different depictions have come to range from the fiendish giants – similar to the ogres of England – to a devious, more human-like folk of the wilderness, living underground in hills, caves or mounds.

       Hey! They’re not all flesh-eating giants who turn to stone in the sunlight. Some are devious little guys who live in wilderness areas (no doubt protecting endangered magical species).

       In Bad Spelling, Kat and her smart-aleck half-brother, Rune, (also happens to be a vampire, but has absolutely no resemblance to the Twilight guy except they’re both cute as hell) are directed by Kat’s flash-frozen dad (Rune calls him a popsicle) to visit the Troll King. At the Hall, she requests assistance from King Ole, the Norwegian Troll King. He arranges for her and Rune to ride the Trollercoaster, which starts in Norway and ends up in the Ural Mountains. From there Kat, Rune, and a changeling troll named Andy travel to Siberia to find Kat's family.

       Clearly, trolls are good. They are nice, helpful, cheerful, and sing fairly well too. Yet aspersions continue to be cast upon these misunderstood creatures. Shame on all of you for making them the bad guys all these years!

 

EXCERPT from Bad Spelling

     Kat ran to where her brother and the three trolls faced each other. The trolls stood shoulder to shoulder, their big, splayed feet firmly planted in front of the footbridge. They bared their chunky yellow teeth and growled at Rune. Although hardly reaching Rune’s shoulder, they each outweighed him. Clearly, the trolls did not intend to let him cross. Looking up and down the streamlet, Kat wondered at their careful guarding of the bridge. Kind of silly, she thought, since anyone could easily step across the rivulet without even getting wet feet. She wondered if these were children, given their short stature. However, their long knives looked very grown up.

     Enunciating each word, Rune held his hands out to show they were empty. Kat had no idea what her brother was saying, since Rune was speaking Old Runish. Except for a few spell words, Kat didn’t understand the ancient tongue.

     Evidently, neither did the trolls. Rune spoke again, louder this time, and took one slow step forward. At this move, the troll on the left lunged at them, jabbing at Rune with his knife. Rune sidestepped the rush, and the troll, taken off balance, stumbled and fell flat on his face. Kat stepped over the troll and grasped his arm but only caught hold of his sleeve. He screamed and pushed her away. The other two trolls ran at her with their knives raised, yelling as they advanced.

     Rune stuck out his foot and tripped the middle troll. The last troll standing went after Rune. The young warlock threw up his hands, arms crossed to fend off the attack. A bright red light arced from his hands to hit the charging troll in the face. The troll dropped his knife and fell to the ground, screaming and rolling around with his hands pressed over his eyes. Rune snatched up the knife and held it to the middle troll’s neck. Kat sat on the one she grabbed, pulling the knife from his flailing hand. The recipient of Rune’s flash attack kept his hands over his eyes.

     Rune spoke again in Old Runish, shouting to make himself heard. It didn’t do any good; the trolls all continued screaming and squealing at the top of their lungs.

     Kat jumped up from the troll’s back and grabbed Rune’s hand, pulling the knife away from the troll’s neck. “Rune,” she yelled, “tell them we won’t hurt them!”

     The thrashing troll froze then turned his cumbersome head toward her.  

     “You can speak our language!” He slapped the troll nearest to him, who abruptly stopped screaming. The one whose neck Rune held the knife to spread his fingers to peek at Rune and Kat.

     Rune released the troll and stood up, looking a little sheepish. “I just assumed—” He stopped then shook his head.

     Kat crouched on her knees next to one of the trolls lying on the ground and patted him on the shoulder. “We mean you no harm. We’re Wiccans from Galdorheim. Maybe you’ve heard of it?”

     Slowly, the trolls climbed to their feet, looked at Kat, then at each other. The three trolls huddled, conferring together. Kat heard a murmur but couldn’t make out what they said.

     Kat continued, searching for something to say. “My Aunt Thordis…” Three pairs of troll eyes turned to her and opened wide. They stared at Kat. The middle troll elbowed the one on his left, who giggled. The troll on the right gave a great whoop of laughter then slapped the middle troll on the back. All three trolls broke into huge guffaws and ended up leaning on each other, wiping tears from their eyes. Rune and Kat stared open-mouthed.

     Finally, the middle troll controlled his laughter long enough to say, “We thought King Ole said to watch for the ones Thor sent. He wouldn’t want any Viking warriors breaking into the hall. ” He broke out laughing again before snorting a couple of times to clear his nose. “Maybe we got the message a little mixed up?”

* * *

All three books in the Witches of Galdorheim series are available in all ebook formats and in print on Amazon.  Click here to view Bad Spelling on Amazon.

Addendum from Termitespeaker:

A little more information about the Troll under the Bridge (Wikipedia): 
The Fremont Troll (also known as The Troll, or the Troll Under the Bridge) is a public sculpture in the Fremont neighborhood of Seattle, Washington in the United States.
The Troll is a mixed media colossal statue, located on N. 36th Street at Troll Avenue N., under the north end of the George Washington Memorial Bridge (also known as the Aurora Bridge). It is clutching an actual Volkswagen Beetle, as if it had just swiped it from the roadway above. The vehicle has a California license plate.  The Troll was sculpted by four local artists: Steve Badanes, Will Martin, Donna Walter, and Ross Whitehead. He is interactive—visitors are encouraged to clamber on him or try to poke out his one good eye (a hubcap). The Troll is 5.5 m (18 ft) high, weighs 6,000 kg (13,000 lb), and is made of steel rebar, wire, and concrete.
... The idea of a troll living under a bridge is derived from the Scandinavian fairytale Three Billy Goats Gruff.

Book Review: Bad Spelling, by Marva Dasef

       Bad Spelling is the first volume of the author’s fantasy series The Witches of Galdorheim.  It’s intended for Young Adults although I think children from age 11 up would enjoy it.  It deals with a colony of European witches who escaped medieval persecution by fleeing to an island in the Barents Sea (north of Norway, Finland, and Russia) and using a magic dome to “terraform” it into normal, livable space.  This region is remote enough to be unfamiliar to the average American and thus can substitute for a constructed world filled with trolls, ogres, shamans, and werewolves.  The story deals with a female adolescent witch named Kat who can’t for the life of her learn how to “spell,” that is, cast spells.  Finding out why and solving the problem is at the heart of the plot, which is lively and fast-moving, although a bit shallow in spots (but then in a short YA book one can’t expect much psychological probing of character).

       The book is filled with clever word plays comparable to “Bad Spelling.”  Chapter titles like “Scry Me a River” and “The Troller Coaster,” as well as allusions to modern conveniences unexpected in this remote witches’ world (Botox, satellite phones, and snowmobiles) form a considerable part of its charm.  I got a particular chuckle from this remark (spoken by a troll) regarding the snowmobiles: “That fat elf at the north pole runs a dealership in the off-season.  Gave me a really good fleet rate.”

       I was intrigued by the linguistic elements.  A poem about a troll from the Eddas of Snorri Sturluson is quoted.  I checked and it’s real.  The translation is slightly different from those given in Wikipedia; I don’t know if the author translated it herself or found another translation or simply altered the translation.  There is also a lot of linguistic give-and-take between Kat and the Sami.  I checked the word “lumooja” and discovered it’s Finnish for witch.  All of those allusions can simply be accepted as imaginary or they can be used to inspire the interest of young people in the languages of the region.

       The premise of the story is set in the Prologue, which is laid “November, 1490 – somewhere in Germany.”  Here we learn how it happened that the witches established their colony on the Barents Sea island.  The author chose to write this prologue in a stilted and phony-sounding dialect, which I presume is meant to suggest an archaic period (something already established in the dateline).  It’s full of sentences like this: “Why cannot they just leave us be?”  “I’m afraid ’tis nothing else we can do,” which isn’t even grammatically correct: “I’m afraid it is nothing else we can do (?)”  This dialect serves no function, because the people in question would not have been speaking English at all in 15th century Germany.  Thus, all the quoted dialogue is a translation.  I found that opener a little off-putting, but fortunately the Prologue is only one page long.

       But that’s just a minor quibble.  The book as a whole is very entertaining and educationally suggestive, and I heartily recommend it for the appropriate age group.

The Simurgh: Faizah's Destiny by Marva Dasef



Simurgh, Sassanian Royal Symbol
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simurgh
(Public Domain)

       I recently reviewed Faizah’s Destiny by Marva Dasef, a Middle Grade book set in a fictional Middle East.  The book follows the adventures of four village children as they undergo a process of growing up and learning about themselves.  It draws on Persian and other Middle Eastern myths for its fantasy.   A main plot element is a quest to find the Simurgh, a mythical bird central to significant Persian tales.  In Dasef's story the Simurgh is a large, deathless bird that can speak and is said to know all things and to be a "great teacher and a guardian."  It has arms in addition to wings and the author gives it moving lips at the end of its beak   It resembles a peacock in appearance and proves to be quite benign, giving each child a look into their potential futures.  It is a non-frightening, benevolent creature.
        The Simurgh was mentioned briefly in my post Bird Myths Pt. 4: Greece and the Middle East.  Today I want to investigate the lore of the Simurgh, which is a good deal more complex than the version we see in Dasef's book.  Faizah's Destiny is a book for middle-graders and so some of the more grotesque or ferocious elements of the Simurgh have been adjusted.  This is not a problem in the context of this book; one of the things that makes myth so valuable as a foundation for fiction is the ability to be adapted to an author's purpose.

        The Simurgh occurs in several different Middle Eastern cultures and literatures.  The Wikipedia article is not well documented, but as usual it makes a good starting point for investigation.  The name is Persian in origin, deriving from a Sanskrit word meaning "eagle, bird of prey."  Like the Roc or the Ziz, it is described as large enough to carry off an elephant.  It has the head of a dog, the claws of a lion, and sometimes a human face, which gives it kinship with the Griffin (body, tail, and back legs of a lion; the head and wings of an eagle; and an eagle's talons as its front feet) as one of the mythological hybrids. 
       However, if you search "Simurgh" in Google Images, you will see that most of the iconography is not of the Griffin variety but depicts this creature as a true bird.  Above is a striking example (http://atheistictemple.blogspot.com/2011/03/benefits-of-animals-medieval-persian.html  - no copyright information given that I can see.)
 
       Wikipedia cites an online reference that gives an comprehensive overview of the Simurgh:  http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/simorg.  Many myths in many cultures surround this fabulous "bird."  I'll recount just two of them.
 
       The Simurgh is associated with the Tree of Life, which is said to stand in the middle of the primal sea.  The Simurgh nests in this tree, which produces the seeds of all plants.  When the Simurgh takes flight, it causes the branches to shake and the seeds to fall. They are then distributed all over the world by wind and rain or by other birds, producing all the plants that we know.  The Simurgh is generally associated with rain, although one source says that sometimes the weight of the bird breaks the branches of the Tree, causing it to wither, thus associating it with the burning sun. 
       The Simurgh can also have an alter-ego, a dark counterpart (quoting from the Encyclopaedia Iranica article cited above): "the exact opposite of those of the Sēnmurw: When Kamak appeared he spread his wings over the whole world, all the rain fell on his wings and back into the sea, drought struck the earth, men died, springs, rivers and wells dried up. Kamak devoured men and animals as a bird pecks grain. Karšāsp showers arrows on him day and night like rain till he succumbs. In killing men Kamak is the opposite of Camrōš, who pecks up the enemies of Iran like grain (Bundahišn 24.24)." ("Chamrosh" is yet another name for the Simurgh, or for a companion bird that sits beneath the Tree of Life and helps to scatter its seeds: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chamrosh ) 
 
      In Ferdowsi's Shahnameh, the national epic of the Persian world, Zal son of Saam was an albino and considered the spawn of the devil. He was abandoned on a mountain top, then, prompted by God, a Simurgh rescued him, raised him, and educated him (example of the epic element of an abandoned infant raised by a wild creature). When Zal returned to the world of men, the Simurgh gave him one of her feathers, which he was to burn if he ever needed assistance. Later, when it appeared Zal's wife would die in labor, he used the feather to summon the Simurgh, who taught him how to do a Caesurean section and so save the child. This child grew up to be Rostam, the great Persian hero, who in a later part of the epic was to be aided by the Simurgh again. 
       This benevolent version had its dark counterpart.  Also quoting the Encyclopaedia Iranica article: "The Simorḡ, protector of Zāl and Rostam, has an evil counterpart called by the same name. She lives on a mountain and looks like a mountain or a black cloud; she can carry off crocodiles, panthers and elephants. She has two young ones as big as herself. This Simorḡ is one of the adversaries Esfandiār kills in the course of his seven exploits on the way to the castle of Arjāsp. To overcome the huge monster Esfandiār constructs a large chariot spiked all over with swords which cut the bird to pieces (IV, p. 509f.). It is not impossible that both birds are originally identical and the Simorḡ is ambivalent. Her benevolent behavior towards Zāl was due to God’s intervention, and went against her nature as a raptor. In the contemptuous description of Zāl’s origin it is said that the Simorḡ spared the child because she could not stomach him (IV, p. 612)."
 
       Fascinating stuff, isn't it?

       I also want to add quotations from the Encyclopaedia Iranica article that deal with the relationship of the Simurgh to the other giant mythical birds of the region (some of which are benevolent and some malevolent).  I have indicated in bold interesting points that tie this post to some of my other discussions and demonstrate the universality of the Big Bird concept:
       "The Simorḡ’s equivalent in Arabic sources is the ʿAnqāʾ. The ambivalent nature of this bird is attested in the Hadith: the bird was created by God with all perfections, but became a plague, and a prophet put an end to the havoc it wrought by exterminating the species (Pellat, p. 509). In the Sumerian Lugalbanda Epic the mythical bird Anzu is a benevolent being. The hero frees the young of the bird, which in return blesses him. In the Sumerian Lugal-e and the Akkadian Anzu Epic the bird represents demonic powers and is vanquished by the god Ninurta. In the Akkadian Etana Epic the hero is carried by the eagle to the heaven of Anu. The correspondence of these motifs with the Simorḡ stories in the Šāhnāma and the Kurdish folktales is obvious, showing that they are of common Near Eastern heritage (Aro, p. 25ff.). In an illustration of a manuscript of the Thousand and One Nights the Simorḡ is identified with the monstrous bird Roḵ (cf. Casartellli, p. 82f.).
       "The Sēnmurw has many traits in common with the Indian Garuḍa, the steed of the god Viṣṇu (cf. Reuben, pp. 489ff., 495, 506f., 510, 515, 517). It is of particular interest that the comparison was made already in Sasanian times. In the first book of the Sanskrit Pañcatantra (the cognate of Kalila and Dimna) is a story of the birds of the shore who complain to their king Garuḍa. In Sogdian, synmrγ is used to translate garuḍa (see Utz, p. 14); and in the old Syriac translation of the Middle Persian original of Kalila and Dimna, Garuḍa is rendered by Simorḡ (cf. de Blois). Fauth (p. 125ff.) has argued that all the mythical giant birds—such as Simorḡ, Phoenix, Garuḍa, the Tibetan Khyuṅ, and also the Melek Ṭāʾus of the Yezidis—are offshoots of an archaic, primordial bird that created the world. Thus Simorḡ as God in Persian mysticism would, curiously, represent a return to the original meaning."

       I really find it more than a little cool to regard the Creator God as a giant bird!  And I can see enough material in the many Simurgh myths to inspire any number of great fantasy stories!