On Feminism and Fantasy

Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible; and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer.
– J.R.R. Tolkien, in reference to criticisms of The Lord of the Rings


Over at Heroines of Fantasy this week, our guest is Athena Andreadis, prolific writer of fiction and non-fiction, and author of the blog Starship Reckless.

I will be honest: Andreadis’ guest post is difficult to understand, but thought-provoking in its own way. Before you read it (or after), I would suggest visiting the blogs of Leo Grin and Joe Abercrombie. This because what Andreadis writes is essentially a criticism of the argument between Grin and Abercrombie, so to get a more-or-less full picture of the conflict, you may need to read all three posts.

Andreadis’ thought-provoking post on Heroines of Fantasy has had me. . .well, provoked in my thought.

Her primary criticism of Grin and Abercrombie focuses on the utter lack of women authors mentioned in their debate. A fair enough point, though I can’t help but think, with all due respect to Grin and Abercrombie, that in the end they are just a couple of guys (in the same way that I am just one gal), and that perhaps these two blog posts are not entirely representative of the full spectrum of dialogue on contemporary fantasy fiction.

But what really does not sit right with me is how Andreadis uses her displeasure with Grin and Abercrombie as a point of departure to discredit male writers of fantasy across the board. In her guest post, Andreadis portrays male fantasy authors as universally misogynistic, and argues that men offer little of interest to the genre as a whole. Her list of authors producing “bland [sexist] gruel” includes well-known and much admired names like J.R.R. Tolkien and George R.R. Martin, both of whom have produced novels that in my humble opinion deserve a somewhat more complimentary qualifier than “bland [sexist] gruel”.

So I don’t think I can follow Andreadis down this particular road, though her commentary does have me thinking about women writers, women protagonists and feminism in the context of fantasy in general.

Having worked as a scientist for more than twenty years, and taught a few of my own courses on women and science, I am not new to feminist discourse. The different schools of feminist thought provide some very powerful tools to help decipher the social constructs that characterize our culture and history. Unfortunately, a feminist analysis of any discipline is an immense topic that cannot be squeezed into a single blog post, and feminism in fantasy is no exception.

Still, as I’ve ventured into the professional world of fantastic literature, I’ve noticed on the one hand, that certain barriers that exist for women in science are also faced by women in fantasy. That if you ask a reader to mention his or her favorite authors, women will almost invariably be in the minority. That stories featuring female protagonists are often perceived as “girl stories”, while stories featuring male protagonists are acceptable reading for everyone.

So it would seem, from this and other less anecdotal evidence, that sexism is alive and well in the field, and that those of us who boast feminist sensibilities have our work cut out for us.

On the other hand, I have had the pleasure of reading a rich variety of fantasy stories about women, written by both women and men. I have met and interacted with a long string of fantasy authors and editors, men and women, who are invariably excited about female protagonists and the crafting of ever more complex roles for the women in our stories.  I've noticed that on the blog Heroines of Fantasy, which often has an overtly feminist tone, our most consistent and enthusiastic commentators have been men.

And when I explore the topic of feminism in fantasy literature, I come across compelling quotes like this one from scholar Elyce Rae Helford:

Science fiction and fantasy serve as important vehicles for feminist thought, particularly as bridges between theory and practice. No other genres so actively invite representations of the ultimate goals of feminism: worlds free of sexism, worlds in which women's contributions (to science) are recognized and valued, worlds in which the diversity of women's desire and sexuality is honored, and worlds that move beyond gender.

So which is it?

Fantasy as a traditionally misogynistic endeavor where only the boys can play, or

Fantasy as the genre that actively promotes the goals of feminism like no other?

At this point in my journey with fantasy, I would say, six of one, half a dozen of the other.

I often claim to write in the tradition of J.R.R. Tolkien and George R.R. Martin. That’s probably a little egotistical on my part, but these are two authors among many (including many women) whose work I greatly admire and try to emulate, albeit through a strong manifestation of my own voice and vision.

I know, just like every other woman who has read Tolkien, that his reknowned epic is characterized by a glaring absence of prominent female characters. And while Martin’s world has more to offer in terms of women players, I – like many other readers – have had my complaints about the way he writes his women.

But does that mean I must then denigrate these and other male authors who have committed similar “crimes” as writers of hopelessly bland sexist gruel?

Or can I respect and learn from their legacy, even as I forge a new future for the women of my own stories?

I have, of course, already answered these questions for myself.

Now I invite you to answer them as well.


You may also wish to see my previous post on Women, Epic Fantasy and George R.R. Martin.

EOLYN Past, Present and Future

This week on Heroines of Fantasy, I revisit one of my favorite holiday topics, ETA Hoffman's The Nutcracker Prince and the Mouse King.  Please stop by to read the post, and join authors Kim Vandervort, Terri-Lynne DeFino and I as we celebrate Stories of Christmas Past. 

Also, Hadley Rille Books is offering the Kindle edition and Nook edition of EOLYN for just $2.99 through the holidays.  Magical reading at a fantastic price.  Take advantage of this great offer while it lasts. 

December has only just begun, and already I am reflecting on 2011 and thinking forward to 2012. 

2011 has been a great year for EOLYN.  Since we celebrated her birthday with Hadley Rille Books on May 7, the novel has sold to an international audience in hardcover, paperback, Kindle and Nook format, including readers from North America, Europe, Central America, Australia and Asia. (And if there are other regions of the world where she is being read that I haven't mentioned, please by all means, let me know!)

Some particularly memorable highlights from EOLYN's debut:

In April of this year, Publisher's Weekly gave the novel the following review:  Though Eolyn becomes the hope of a rebellion, she never has to carry the whole weight of the story; Akmael, the "witch" Ghemena, and other characters develop many intriguing facets. Gastreich allows her heroes to have flaws--including moments of cowardice--and some victories bring new sorrows. Vigorously told deceptions and and battle scenes will satisfy fans of traditional epic fantasy with a romantic thread.   

At the end of that same month, students at Avila University received a special preview of the novel at our Pre-Launch Party. The Launch Party on May 7 was held at the Writers Place in Kansas City, Missouri, and attended by an enthusiastic crowd, including guests from Chicago, Washington DC, the United Kingdom and Germany. 

Since then, EOLYN has made appearances at several booksignings and conferences, including Powell's Books in Portland OR, Prospero's Books in Kansas City, Who Else! Books in Denver CO, the KU Bookstore in Lawrence KS, ConQuest, Bubonicon, the Campbell Conference, and the World Fantasy Convention in San Diego CA.  The novel has also been favorably reviewed by book bloggers and authors such as Eliabeth Hawthorne, Carlyle Clark and Dane Grannon, as well as by customers on Amazon, Barnes&Noble and Goodreads. (By the way, if you have read EOLYN but have not yet posted a customer review, please take a moment to do so.  Help other readers decide if this is magical medieval fantasy is the right story for them.) 

EOLYN has also been added to the collections of public libraries across the United States. (If it's not yet available in your library, please take a moment to request it.  Help make this epic fantasy, with its strong female protagonist, available for everyone's enjoyment.)

So, what do we have planned for 2012?

Well, I'm just beginning to answer that question.  I would like to visit some new cons next year, and have put LunaCon, ConQuest, WorldCon and MileHiCon on my calendar for the moment.  In the next few days, I intend to meet with my editor regarding book signing venues, and will keep you posted about that.  Also, watch for more editorial reviews of EOLYN in coming months.  And there will be some special events and surprises. . .that I have to keep under wraps for the moment. 

2012 is also the year in which I plan to finish the sequel to EOLYN, scheduled for release in Fall of 2013.  Interested in a sneak preview of book two?  Keep your eyes on this site. . .

Heroines in Epic Fantasy

Kim Vandervort, author of THE SONG AND THE SORCERESS and THE NORTHERN QUEEN, has posted a wonderful essay on defining the heroine in epic fantasy on our new blog Heroines of Fantasy. 

Here's a sneak preview:

"The problem with 'traditional' female characters in epic fantasy, as I see it, is that they fall into one of only a few roles: the goodly matron, the healer, the love interest, the witch, the prostitute, and the victim. Sometimes they fulfill more than one of these roles at a time. She’s a witch AND a goodly matron! She’s the prostitute AND the victim AND the love interest! 5x bonus for a character who manages to meet all of the stereotypes at the same time! Unfortunately, she doesn’t play much of a role beyond that prescribed for her by the genre. Our “heroine,” even when she wields a sword like a badass, still swoons over our hero and falls apart like bad toilet paper whenever the going gets tough.


Heads-up, people: these are not real women. In order to write a proper heroine, the author has to respect the characteristics that make women strong and use those to advantage instead of trying to force the heroine to occupy a stale stereotype or squish into the role traditionally occupied by the hero..."

To read more and share your own comments and insights, stop by Heroines of Fantasy. 

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Heroines of Fantasy launches this week

Our first post for the new blog Heroines of Fantasy is up.  Here's a preview, written in response to this month's theme "Why Fantasy?": 

"...For colleagues who know me through my day job as a biology professor, the revelation that I am also a fantasy author seems all the more puzzling. Why would a scientist write fantasy? I think the perception that this is somehow contradictory stems from our cultural tendency to assume it is the career that defines the person, and not the person who defines her career.

But also, I think we tend to forget that fantasy and science, although very different endeavors, nonetheless respond to very similar needs..."

To read and comment on the full post, visit Heroines of Fantasy. 

Also on Heroines of Fantasy, register this month to win a free signed copy of Eolyn with our Grand Opening Raffle. The raffle will be held on October 1, 2011.

Thank you for stopping by, and I hope to see you at the new site!

Something Good This Way Comes

I have some very exciting news.  In the next couple of weeks -- on September 5, to be exact -- I will be launching a new blog with fellow fantasy authors Kim Vandervort and Terri-Lynne DeFino.  Entitled Heroines of Fantasy, this will be a new forum dedicated to lively discussion of all aspects of fantasy fiction, and especially women in fantasy fiction. 

Kim, Terri and I will take turns posting, and we will bring in guest bloggers once or twice a month -- editors, authors, and artists in the field -- so be prepared for a wide variety of perspectives on and experiences with this wonderful and varied genre that we call fantasy.  We also hope that you, the reader, will take time to participate in those discussions and share your thoughts, insights and inspirations. 

As Heroines of Fantasy gathers steam, I will be moving away from regular posts on my blog for EOLYN.  This website will remain, so that readers can access it as a repository of information about the history and magic of Moisehen, as well as the writing and publishing of the novel itself.  I will also keep the list of events up-to-date, and will likely post special news bulletins once in a while.

But if you want to continue reading the kinds of posts you have seen on my blog for EOLYN on a weekly basis -- now expanded in terms of breadth of topics and diversity of perspectives --  I encourage you to visit and follow Heroines of Fantasy.  I know you will not be disappointed with everything Terri, Kim and I have planned for the new site.

A couple other news briefs for this week:

Signed copies of EOLYN will be available next weekend at Bubicon in Albequerque, NM, Aug 26-28.  Look for Who Else! Books among the vendors. 

The date and time has been set for the Dead Horse Society's Annual Reading, this year entitled Emergence.   Ten authors from this Kansas City Area speculative fiction writers group, including me, will be presenting short works on Saturday, September 10, at the Writers Place, 3607 Pennsylvania, Kansas City, Missouri.  I will be reading from a story entitled 'Born of Fire', written as part of my Spring 2011 Andrews Writers Residency.  Those of you familiar with Eolyn lore will be interested to know that 'Born of Fire' features a scene from the life of Briana, when she was a young maga as as yet untried by love and war. There will also be copies of EOLYN available for purchase and signing.  This is the third year we have done this event, and it is always a great evening with lots of wonderful story telling, so I hope you will stop by if you are in the area.

I'm starting the gear up for World Fantasy in San Diego at the end of October.  More details to come on that...

Have a great week!

Landscape and Characters in the World of FINDER

This week I'm very happy to host guest blogger Terri-Lynne DeFino, author of FINDER and the soon-to-be-released A TIME NEVER LIVED.  The world of FINDER is similar to our Mediterranean in climate and geography.  Here, Terri-Lynne talks about how she constructed her world, and the impact of her landscapes on the characters that inhabit them. 

***


Getting the map right is one of the things many budding fantasy writers don't take into account when worldbuilding. I know I didn't. An Arctic tundra two weeks walk from balmy swampland? No problem! Except there is.


When creating a world, some things are generally taken for granted. There is one sun, usually one moon (the tidal kerfuffle two or more cause alone is not worth the coolness factor.) Both are similar distances from our worlds. The size of the world, the land to water ratio, the atmosphere and size of land masses will be largely similar to our own. There are those writers who go the extra lengths to create wholly unique worlds with strange but workable weather patterns and such, and then there are those who keep their worlds to one small, magical, Europe-like forest; but most of us fall in that middle ground of keeping things largely the same, just tweaked a bit.

I'm not going to pretend to be some sort of geological expert. I'm not even close. When it came time to create my world for Finder, I modeled it loosely after the Mediterranean. My characters travel Southern/Eastern Europe and Northern Africa-like terrains. The mountains to the east are there because continental shifts put them there. The same shift cut off part of the once-vast ocean, creating the Bloodbane Sea. Only narrow straits allow water in or out, cutting off larger sailing ships from entering the Bloodbane from the west, and making the basin extremely defensible from the east. Therk's Iabba Desert is what's left of the ocean floor after the waters receded.

Like our own world, the south toward the equator is generally warmer than the north, so while the mountains in Greater Argoa are often quite cold, those to the south only get snow in the higher elevations. The Bihn Iabba River flows--unlike the Nile--north to south. There are more pine forests farther north in Greater Argoa, and scrubby cedars along the western coast of Therk, in Tinnangar, while the southern mountains mainly contain deciduous hardwoods. Once again, these are things I borrowed from our world, because I know they work, even if I don't know why.

Another aspect of geography that most budding fantasy writers don't take into account is how it affects language. Idioms, curse words, colloquialisms, even religion, often stem from environment. "That's a fine kettle of fish!" isn't an idiom that's going to come from the middle of the desert, and neither is "three sheets to the wind." The local gods of agricultural regions will be gods of planting, harvest, weather, the hunt; those along the coastline will be watery ones. In my desert, the gods are "ornery desert gods" because, let's face it, a harsh climate is going to birth harsh gods. By the same token, the gods in mild Bosbana are more inclined to art and revels. There are always exceptions, of course--but these will have stories to go with them. For example, in my recently completed novel, A Time Never Lived, the migration of mountainfolk brought their vastly different gods to the desert. Their stories changed over time to reflect assimilation, but some core elements that simply do not make sense environment-wise--like redheaded gods in a land that does not produce redheads--remain.

Obviously, the clothes your characters wear will reflect environment, not just in weight and material but in color. Desert people will wear a lot of white to reflect the sun. Most colors would be expensive; the cost of importing the plant extracts or mineral compounds to create them would be prohibitive. Even if there were succulents, grasses and such available, they would not be abundant enough to make color cost-effective. The wealthy could afford color, the poor could not; however in a heavily wooded or farming community, color is abundant. In the world I created, the wealthy Merchants along the Strip adorn their businesses with colorful pavilions, a way to show their prosperity.

We are where we come from, there's no doubt about that. City or country, coastal or desert, the way we think, speak, eat is determined largely by our environment. Geography is part of every story ever written, whether the writers and readers know or not; it comes out in details we often take for granted. This is why the geography needs to work, and why we have to know what our worlds look like north, south, east and west. If we don't, our worlds won't be believable, and it will show.


Terri-Lynne DeFino's FINDER is available in hardcover, softcover, Kindle and Nook formats.  Look for it on-line through Amazon or Barnes and Noble.  You can also visit Terri at her livejournal blog, http://bogwitch64.livejournal.com/ 

The Ecological Context of Eolyn's World

I need to start this post by correcting an error from last week.  In my July 30 post, I referred to the Wall in Westeros as having a location near a "polar latitude". One of the blog's readers brought to my attention that this was a rather careless statement; though unfortunately blogger didn't let him post the comment.  (By the way, I've had a few complaints lately about not being able to post comments on blogger.  If you have also had problems with this, please let me know at eolyn.of.the.south.woods(at)gmail.com.)

My use of 'polar' in this context stemmed from my habit of thinking of the planet as divided into six latitudinal regions defined by atmospheric circulation (blame it on my training as an ecologist).  North of the equator, we have three of these regions: a belt of northeast trade winds (from 0N to about 30N), a belt of temperate westerlies (from about 30N to 60N), and the belt of polar easterlies (from about 60N to the north pole). 

I've lapsed into the habit of calling this third region of polar easterlies 'polar', which is not an entirely accurate, and can lend to additional confusion when one takes into account that the Arctic Circle itself (what most people would probably call 'polar') is defined not by wind patterns but by the southern extremity of the 24-hour polar day.  The southern limit of the Arctic Circle is at about 66N.

So, all this to say, what I should have written last week is that the Wall, as I see it, is probably located somewhere around the earth equivalent of 60N. This seems to be more or less in agreement with what other folks who are better informed than I regarding Martin lore have concluded.  My apologies for any confusion my last post might have generated.

Now, back to the map of Moisehén...

This is a really good time for me to be thinking about maps.  I have been working for about a year now on the sequel to EOLYN, and just as our own world becomes bigger as we move through life, so Eolyn's world has grown in the second book to include kingdoms outside of Moisehén. Of course, I have always had a pretty solid idea as to where Moisehén fits in the context of the surrounding regions of Roenfyn, Galia, Antaria, the Paramen Mountains and the High Plains of the Syrnte, but reaffirming the details of climate and topography has been a very useful exercise for me.

Moisehén, as I've mentioned elsewhere, is a land-locked country that receives humid westerly winds, with water vapor coming not only from an ocean to the west, but also from a large inland sea known as the Sea of Rabeln.  The region also receives the influence of the equivalent of a 'Gulf Stream'.  (As a small aside, that means somewhere waaaay to the south west of the continent, there must be a structure similar to the isthmus of Central America, which upon its formation some 5-6 million years ago, generated the Gulf Stream, with significant impacts on the climate of Europe.)

a map of the Gulf Stream

The interior mountains of the continent, including the Paramen Mountains and the Eastern Surmaeg, are high, non-volcanic ranges.  But to the west and southwest of Moisehén, on the other side of Roenfyn, we have the Kingdom of Galia, a place of lordly wizards who for generations have intermarried with the Magas of Moisehen.  Galia is a coastal country with a volcanic mountain range.  In the novel EOLYN, we never visit Galia, but Eolyn learns about it through unusual means:


"On the western shores of Galia, fire springs from the earth and flows in burning rivers to the sea.  It is from this union of earth, fire and water that the Galian wizards draw their power."

Galian volcanos are important to Moisehén because the same winds that bring moisture to this inland country also pick up volcanic debris from Galia, which over geological time has settled on the landscape, particularly in the high valley of Moehn (Eolyn's home), resulting in very rich soils that, together with relatively heavy rainfall, have supported dense forests and -- where the forests have been cleared for farming -- very productive agriculture.

The South Woods of Moehn and the great forest of East Selen are actually remnants of vast expanses of woodland that once covered most of the Kingdom of Moisehen. The western portion of the country is somewhat drier than the eastern portion, and has also traditionally supported patches of grassland intermixed with woods. 

When drawing the map of Moisehén (embedded above), artist Ginger Prewitt was careful to indicate the transition from oak dominated deciduous forest in the south (which lose their leaves every winter) to coniferous evergreen forest in the north, Selen being on the whole a cooler region than Moehn, and therefore supporting a somewhat different ecosystem.

Prewitt was also kind enough to put a wolf in the South Woods for me.  I think that's my favorite part of the whole map. 

The map that was drawn up for the first novel does not include any of the surrounding kingdoms, but I mention them here to emphasize that Moisehén is an integral part of a greater whole.  As the author, it was important for me to have some vision of that greater whole in order to better understand the specifics of the landscape in which my characters lived -- which in turn allowed me a greater understanding the characters themselves.

For more thoughts on the relationship between characters, culture and landscape, stay tuned for a special guest post from Terri-Lynne DeFino, author of FINDER.  Coming soon! 

Biogeography in Fantasy

My summer reading list has included the fourth book of George R.R. Martin's Ice and Fire series, entitled A Feast for Crows.  Certain events in the story had me mulling over the map of Westeros the other day, trying to understand why Dorne has a desert environment. 

The mountain range on the west side of the kingdom of Dorne, combined with the fact that Martin mentions the winds come from the west, gave me part of the answer, as the 'rain shadow effect' (see below) would make those winds dry.  Still, Dorne has quite a bit of coast off the southwest, and it seemed to me the air masses coming from that ocean would have a lot of moisture. 

Then it occured to me -- and here was the key to the puzzle -- that Westeros is actually much larger than I've imagined it to be, extending from a polar latitude near the Wall to what is most likely to about 30N near the region of Dorne.  Roughly equivalent to the north-south expanse of Europe, from the nordic countries to Spain, with a little extra land tacked on in the south.  Some time on "A Wiki of Ice and Fire" corroborated my suspicion, and laid to rest my doubts about the capacity of Dorne to be a dry landscape. 

(My next thought was, "No wonder the royal houses of Westeros have such a hard time keeping it all under one kingdom."  I mean, really.  Why do they even try?)

One of the most challenging and interesting tasks of writing fantasy is "world building".  I was first introduced to this term by DHS, my local writers group that specializes in fantasy, horror and science fiction.  There are many, many aspects to world building, but from my point of view one must always start with the foundation:  the landscapes and biomes in which our characters live. 

It is the landscape that determines the resources available to the human (or non-human) characters in our stories.  The distribution and abundance of those resources, as well as the relative isolation of different regions, can in turn impact the structure and development of the human societies that depend upon them.

The author decides just how meticulous he or she wants (or needs) to be with the biogeographic details of a fantasy world.  But having a landscape that makes 'biogeographical sense' is one of many factors that contributes to the authenticity of a story, and whether or not your readers have conscientious knowledge of the basics of geography and climate, at some level they will sense whether the world 'feels' real or not.

When thinking about the geography and climate of your world, here are some basics to keep in mind:

 1. It's generally easier to start by assuming your world is 'earth-like' in the basics of size, rotation, relative amounts of land surface vs. water surface, distance from the sun, and so forth.  (Of course, if you are a science fiction writer, you'll probably want to throw this point out the window, as the whole premise of your story may involve a world entirely different from earth.  A wonderful example of this is Geoffrey A. Landis' award-winning short story 'The Sultan of the Clouds', set in a level of Venus' atmosphere that has more or less the equivalent of a tropical environment on earth.) 

2. Be aware of the Coriolis effect, which determines large-scale wind patterns on the earth's surface.  Because of the Coriolis effect, prevailing winds will come from different directions depending on where you are on the planet.  In the polar and tropical latitudes, prevailing winds will come from the east (northeast or southeast, depending on which side of the equator you're on).  In temperate latitudes, prevailing winds will come from the west (again, northwest or southwest, depending on which side of the equator). The interaction of landmasses, waterbodies, and wind is an important determinant of local weather patterns, so knowing where the wind is coming from (and whether it has passed over a large water body in the process of getting there) will help determine where the forests, grasslands and deserts can be found on the map of your world.

3. The interaction between the sun's energy and the earth's atmosphere leads to large-scale patterns in the distribution of forests, grasslands, deserts and polar environments, which we refer to collectively as biomes.  For example, at 30N and 30S, one can find a belt of deserts that circle the earth.  (This is the same belt that I now believe Dorne is a part of in Martin's world.)  Boreal forests, on the other hand, dominate from about 50N to 70N.  (And if you've ever wondered why there's more Boreal forest north of the equator than south of it, have a look at a map.  You'll notice our planet has a lot more land between 50N and 70N than it does between 50S and 70S. This consideration adds another level of complexity to world building.  Where are your continents and seas?  The distribution of landmasses can have a huge impact on global and local climate, and therefore the distribution of biomes.)

4. Local mountain ranges are associated with 'rain shadows', a phenomenon which causes the windward side of the range to be relatively wet, while the other side of the range tends to be dry.  In the rain shadow effect, as air masses hit mountain ranges, they rise and become cooler.  The evaporated water they carry condenses and falls as precipitation.  By the time the air mass crosses the mountain range, it has lost a lot of its moisture, resulting in dry climates on the other side.  Variation in the topography of your mountain range can add a lot of complexity to this effect.  Low passes, for example, can allow channels of moister air to reach the far side of the range.  Very high mountains can result in local air circulation patterns that lead to unusually wet slopes.  And within a mountain range, of course, there can be an interesting mix of relatively wet and dry slopes and valleys.

That's probably enough for one post.  There are many excellent on-line resources that can tell you more about how latitutude, wind patterns, land masses and water bodies interact to determine the distribution of biomes on our planet, so you can put these principles into practice when developing your fantasy world.

Next week, we'll have a look at the map of Moisehen, and talk about how these and other phenomena affect the climate and ecosystems of Eolyn's world. 

What People Are Saying About EOLYN

Hadley Rille Books editor Eric T. Reynolds once said to me, "Authors like to know they're being read." 

It's true.  When I first started writing EOLYN, my core motivation was simply the need to write; but as I began to share the manuscript with an ever-wider circle of readers and critics, the need to be read became increasingly important.  Now, with EOLYN in print, every time I hear it is being read -- and enjoyed -- it adds a spark of brightness to my day. 

Since its release this past May, EOLYN has garnered several reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, all of which have been positive.  That's not to say readers haven't had an occasional minor complaint, but for the most part people are enjoying the adventure.  Some feedback from Amazon readers:

"...a book to first savor at great length, and then revisit over and over again. Ms. Gastreich's characters become as real to the reader as the next-door neighbor, and much more beloved."

"...a great story that will take you on an emotional journey with romance and thrilling action."

"When it's summer within the story, you'll feel the heat....When it's winter, you'll feel the chill down to your bones. Ms. Gastreich's uncanny talent for truly creating a world her readers can become part of is a rare gift, and one she shares abundantly in Eolyn."

"Gastreich's Eolyn focuses on the emotional, political, and physical conflicts between powerful and three-dimensional characters."

"The ending is superb, both the climactic battle and its aftermath leaving no easy answers or trite successes: it's a real-world ending..."

"I cannot wait for her next book."

In addition to the Amazon reviews (which you can view in their entirety on Amazon's page for  EOLYN), it seems not a day has passed without someone somewhere mentioning a reader's enjoyment of this novel.  Word has come to me about friends of friends, nieces, nephews, cousins, grandchildren, adults and young alike, some connected to me, others not, but all finding a moment of escape and adventure in the pages of EOLYN.  Here are some comments you won't find on Amazon, as they have arrived through other channels:
 
"One of my birthday gifts to myself was to stay up until 1AM the night before so I could finish EOLYN."
 
"At first I didn't think I would be interested in the subject matter, however, the vivid descriptions made her characters come alive and the countryside so real, one could almost smell the forest."
 
"It was really surprising in the directions it took.  I enjoyed it a lot!  At first I thought it was a young adult novel, but it quickly changed into a much more politically charged book.  And I liked the ending a great deal..."
 
"I just finished your magical book Eolyn and now am ready for the second one. Hurry!"


All this to say, if you haven't yet indulged in the adventure of reading EOLYN, now is the time to do it.

The novel can be ordered online from Amazon or Barnes and Noble, and is available in hardcover, paperback and Kindle editions (with the release of the Nook edition soon to come).  If you're feeling tight on your book budget (and don't have a Kindle or a Nook), look for EOLYN in libraries.  As of this writing, twenty-eight public library systems in eighteen states carry the novel.  For all you expats in my adopted country of Costa Rica, EOLYN is also available at the Mark Twain Library at the Centro Cultural Norteamericano Costarricenses. 

Check it out -- literally or figuratively.  You will not regret it.

FRIENDS AND FANS OF EOLYN IN DENVER:  I'm going to visit you next weekend!  Stop by Who Else! Books, 200S Broadway, Denver, Colorado, 80209, on Saturday, July 23, to talk about the novel in particular, and fantasy in general.  Books will be available for purchase and signing.  The fun starts at 3pm.  Hope to see you there!