Guest Post by Author Jeffe Kennedy about Warrior Women + Giveaway

talon of the hawk by jeffe kennedyToday’s guest post is from one of my favorite authors. Jeffe Kennedy is the author of both the Covenant of Thorns paranormal romance series and the fantasy-with-romance The Twelve Kingdoms. She is the author of today’s featured book, The Talon of the Hawk, which stars a marvelously portrayed warrior woman, Ursula of the Twelve Kingdoms, and concludes the series. I asked Jeffe to give us her take on writing a warrior woman heroine, and here’s what she had to say.

The Joy of Writing Warrior Women
by Jeffe Kennedy

One of my favorite parts of having THE TALON OF THE HAWK be live in the world is seeing how readers react to the amazing cover. Not just any readers, but women – especially younger ones.

I mean, there’s my very tough warrior princess with her steely gaze, a leather bustier with studs, vambraces and a great big, gleaming sword. Seriously, one after another, I saw women’s eyes light up with unholy joy.

I’m hearing about it, too, with the new Mad Max movie. I even reposted this great gif on my Tumblr of Charlize Theron answering questions at Cannes. (Fair Warning: there’s a lot of very sexy stuff on my Tumblr, very NSFW (not safe for work) pics, so know that if you go exploring there. :))  Someone asked her where the anger came from in the movie’s women warriors and she answers “Women have that.” And clearly the crowd cheers because she adds that she’s not the only one.

Yes. Women have rage like men have rage. Because people have anger when things don’t go our way – and rage gives us the energy to make the necessary changes so things DO go our way.

Sometimes I think women might have more anger because we have fewer acceptable outlets. And not the same number and quality of escapist images. We go to the movies and the guys get the whole trip of the awesome hero defeating everything and everyone, while the woman helps in some feminine way or is simply rescued.

by the sword by mercedes lackeyThis is why I *loved* writing a woman warrior! I got to live the fantasy of being Ursula – blazingly fast, able to defeat even a much bigger man. She’s smart, tough, strong and a hero to those around her. No, she’s not perfect. She’s also incredibly stubborn, prickly and doesn’t trust easily. Much like any number of male action heroes. Some readers have said she reminds them of Brienne of Tarth in Game of Thrones and I can totally see that.

I would love to see more women warriors in all genres. One of my long time favorites is Kerowyn in BY THE SWORD, by Mercedes Lackey. What are some others you can think of? Hit me!

Jeffe KennedyJeffe Kennedy is an award-winning author with a writing career that spans decades. Her works include non-fiction, poetry, short fiction, and novels. She has been a Ucross Foundation Fellow, received the Wyoming Arts Council Fellowship for Poetry, and was awarded a Frank Nelson Doubleday Memorial Award. Her essays have appeared in many publications, including Redbook. Her most recent works include a number of fiction series: the fantasy romance novels of A Covenant of Thorns; the contemporary BDSM novellas of the Facets of Passion, and an erotic contemporary serial novel, Master of the Opera, which released beginning January 2, 2014. A fourth series, the fantasy trilogy The Twelve Kingdoms, hit the shelves starting in May 2014 and a fifth, the highly anticipated erotic romance trilogy, Falling Under, will release starting in July.

She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with two Maine coon cats, plentiful free-range lizards and a very handsome Doctor of Oriental Medicine.

Jeffe can be found online at her website: JeffeKennedy.com, every Sunday at the popular Word Whores blog, on Facebook, and pretty much constantly on Twitter @jeffekennedy. She is represented by Foreword Literary.

To learn about Jeffe, visit her website or blog or follow her on Facebook or Twitter.

~~~~~~GIVEAWAY~~~~~~

mark of the tala by jeffe kennedyI loved this series so much that I can’t resist sharing it. Therefore, I’m giving away a copy of any book in the Twelve Kingdoms series to one lucky winner. So that’s a choice of either The Mark of the Tala, The Tears of the Rose or The Talon of the Hawk.

This is an international giveaway. If you are located anywhere that The Book Depository ships, you’re welcome to enter. For U.S. winners, you can choose between ebook and paperback.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Review: The Talon of the Hawk by Jeffe Kennedy

talon of the hawk by jeffe kennedyFormat read: ebook provided by the publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: paperback, ebook
Genre: fantasy romance
Series: The Twelve Kingdoms #3
Length: 352 pages
Publisher: Kensington
Date Released: May 26, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author’s Website, Publisher’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Book Depository

A HEAVY CROWN

Three daughters were born to High King Uorsin, in place of the son he wanted. The youngest, lovely and sweet. The middle, pretty and subtle, with an air of magic. And the eldest, the Heir. A girl grudgingly honed to leadership, not beauty, to bear the sword and honor of the king.

Ursula’s loyalty is as ingrained as her straight warrior’s spine. She protects the peace of the Twelve Kingdoms with sweat and blood, her sisters from threats far and near. And she protects her father to prove her worth. But she never imagined her loyalty would become an open question on palace grounds. That her father would receive her with a foreign witch at one side and a hireling captain at the other—that soldiers would look on her as a woman, not as a warrior. She also never expected to decide the destiny of her sisters, of her people, of the Twelve Kingdoms and the Thirteenth. Not with her father still on the throne and war in the air. But the choice is before her. And the Heir must lead…

My Review:

When I finished this marvelous book, one of my first thoughts was that it was an absolute tragedy that too many people will see the label “fantasy romance” and turn away, because The Twelve Kingdoms series is an absolutely awesome epic fantasy series, complete with oath-breaking kings, witchy queens, black and white magic, political skullduggery and epic betrayals and reversals of fortune. Good triumphs, evil gets its just desserts, justice prevails. Kingdoms fall, kingdoms rise. The King is dead, long live the Queen.

It just so happens that in each of the books in the series, one of the High King’s daughters finds true love, amidst a whole lot of struggle and also with a kingdom to fight for. And through these fantastic women, we also see lots of different ways to become a heroine, whether by magic, by religion, or by the sword.

Also a marvelous celebration of sisterhood. In the end, the daughters of High King Uorsin and Queen Salena discover that they are fated to either rise together, or fall together. And that no matter what happens or how their paths may diverge, they are always stronger together. The men they love are there to help and assist, but it is the women who run this show.

Evil wears a woman’s face, too. So we have fantastic heroines and dastardly female villains. Evil is not vanquished with a hair pulling cat fight, but righteously with a sword, also in the hands of a woman.

There is a message here, wrapped in an awesome fantasy series, that we can be and do anything, both good and evil (and also in between). It’s up to us to decide our fate.

mark of the tala by jeffe kennedyThe Talon of the Hawk brings the story begun in The Mark of the Tala (reviewed here) and continued in The Tears of the Rose (here) to its epic conclusion.

Ursula is High King Uorsin’s oldest daughter, and his putative heir. He has been constantly disappointed that Ursula is a woman, but at the same time has trained her to be the warrior-queen that the Twelve Kingdoms will need when he is gone. He just can’t admit that day will ever come, and he is also unable to let go of the idea of a male heir.

When Ursula’s youngest sister has a boychild, Uorsin wants to make the new princeling his heir, in spite of Astar being a) a baby, and b) the rightful heir to one of the principalities that make up the Twelve Kingdoms. Uorsin and the boy’s other grandfather, King Erich, are fighting over the little body of this tiny baby, while his mother hunts for his kidnapped twin sister.

Ursula can’t bear to take the baby from his mother, and won’t kidnap her sister and her child in order to please her tyrannical father. She wants him to be reasonable, but she should know better.

She returns to a court under siege. Her father has hired mercenaries to take over all the guard posts, and has imprisoned the entire town within its walls. He is also under the sway of a magic practitioner who makes even the tough mercenaries quake in their very large boots.

Ursula is ultimately faced with a dire choice – is she loyal to the High King, or to the Twelve Kingdoms? Until she returns to court without her sister’s child, she has always thought they were one and the same. Seeing the deepening paranoia that has descended upon the king, she finally admits that the needs of the Kingdom are more important than the corrupt wishes of its mad King.

This is Ursula’s quest – to escape her father’s madness, to find her sisters, and to free the kingdom from its descent into evil and death – before it is too late.

tears of the rose by jeffe kennedyEscape Rating A+: I’ll admit that I didn’t much like youngest sister Amelia (until she got her pretty little self-centered head out of her ass) but I’ve always had a fondness for Ursula.

She is an absolutely stellar example of the warrior-princess, but like each of her sisters, she has hidden depths that have yet to be plumbed, and hidden heartaches that need to be lanced of their pain before she can be the queen she must be.

So this story is one about Ursula both finding her heart, and admitting what has been hiding in it all along. Ursula has spent her life pretending not to hear the rumors that she hates men and sleeps with her sword, and all the nastiness encased in those rumors, and in the court’s judgment of her appearance as a warrior and not a pretty girl.

Well, she does sleep with her sword. She needs to protect herself against attack. But those rumors also hide a much deeper secret, and it takes a mercenary captain to dig in and hold on long enough for her pain to finally be healed.

Ursula has always protected her sisters from the worst of their father’s abuses, and even from the knowledge that those abuses were happening. They don’t know the depths to which their father sunk, or the horrific nature of exactly what Ursula has been hiding from them.

Mercenary Captain Harlan helps Ursula to heal by getting her to finally talk about what is wrong. He listens. He encourages her to let out the pain she’s been holding in, because as a leader of fighters he has come to the conclusion that sharing the secret decreases its power to hurt.

What he does not do, what does not happen in this book, is a healing by “magic cock”. He loves her and he helps her to be her best self. While they do fall in love and become lovers, the physical aspects of their eventual relationship are not what cures Ursula. It’s her revealing the secret, and finally realizing that she was abused and not consenting, that it was not her fault, that allows her to heal. They only become lovers after Ursula is able to let go of the harm that has been done to her.

Meanwhile, there is a huge quest going on. Her sister Andromeda, and Andromeda’s husband Rayfe, are the rulers of the magic country of the Tala. There are resistance factions in their court that are responsible for the kidnapping of sister Amelia’s daughter Stella. The sisters are not just hunting Stella, but they are also trying to put down the plot and recover Andromeda’s kingdom.

As if that wasn’t enough, Amelia, as the avatar of the goddess Glorianna, is working to bring down the magical barrier between the Tala and the Twelve Kingdoms. Not, as their father desires, in order to conquer the Tala, but because the walling off of magic is sickening all the kingdoms.

Too little of a good thing turns out to be deadly. And too much of a good thing is equally as damaging, although less obviously.

negotiation by jeffe kennedyAll of the action, and the fate of all the sisters and all the kingdoms, ties back to the marriage of their parents. Queen Salena saw all of this when she married Uorsin (in the novella Negotiation) and bartered her own life and happiness in the hopes that one day her daughters would be able to fix the world.

This series comes to a stunning conclusion, one that ties up all the loose ends and sets the stage for a marvelous future for the Twelve Kingdoms. Happily Ever After all around. And a lovely book hangover for any fantasy or fantasy romance fan.

***FTC Disclaimer: Most books reviewed on this site have been provided free of charge by the publisher, author or publicist. Some books we have purchased with our own money or borrowed from a public library and will be noted as such. Any links to places to purchase books are provided as a convenience, and do not serve as an endorsement by this blog. All reviews are the true and honest opinion of the blogger reviewing the book. The method of acquiring the book does not have a bearing on the content of the review.