Winner, 2010 EPIC Ebook Award for fiction in the Mainstream category. Breathtakingly gorgeous writing … a multi-layered tale of such depth, breadth and insight that it was very nearly a spiritual experience… –from a review by T. T. Thomas on Amazon.com …reminds me of Le Guin, of Cecelia Holland, and something of Rosemary Sutcliff… It made me feel as I did when I was a child reading authors like those… Once again I was in a magical place… –from a review by Charles Ferguson on Amazon.com …there’s no ring of power or glowing sword of specialness; the magic, like the tone of the book, is quiet. It feels real.
–from a blog review on livejournal When she was a child, the author of When Women Were Warriors happily identified with all the male heroes she read about in stories that began, Once upon a time, a young man went out to seek his fortune.
But she would have been delighted to discover even one story like that with a female protagonist. Since she never did find the story she was looking for all those years ago, she decided to write it. In Book I of the trilogy, Tamras arrives in Merin’s house to begin her apprenticeship as a warrior, but her small stature causes many, including Tamras herself, to doubt that she will ever become a competent swordswoman. To make matters worse, the Lady Merin assigns her the position of companion, little more than a personal servant, to a woman who came to Merin’s house, seemingly out of nowhere, the previous winter, and this stranger wants nothing to do with Tamras. …
Both men and women of all persuasions seem to love these books… Very rare. Bravo, Bravo, Bravo –from a review by T. T. Thomas on Amazon.com Think Beowulf–only comprehensible and with girls.
–from a review on the blog, The Rainbow Reader, by Baxter Clare Trautman, author of The River Within