Cover Reveal: Girls Can't be Knights by Lee French

One of my fellow authors on Myrddin, Lee French, releases her latest YA fantasy book soon. I'm really pleased to be doing a cover reveal for the book, and hope to get a copy for review soon.

The book champions strong female characters in a contemporary fantasy with ghostly knights. 

Left with only a locket after the death of her father, Claire is hopeless – until she meets Justin, an actual knight. Things get complicated when a ghost tries to devour her soul.

Sixteenyearold Claire has a hard time trusting anyone as a result of years in the foster care system, but things change when she forms a new friendship. Justin, a Spirit Knight, rides in on an actual horse and transforms her outlook on the world, while also saving her life from restless ghosts. But one question remains – how does she bear the knights’ mark on her soul? Everyone knows girls can’t be knights.

“’Girls Can’t Be Knights’ is a story of camaraderie and friendship,” Lee says.  “It’s a story about finding your place in the world with people who understand you, but it’s also about finding inner strength and being whoever you want – even a girl who’s a knight.”

“Girls Can’t Be Knights” is another in the long line of books in Lee French’s impressive career, which includes nine books, one trilogy, one epic fantasy series and a short story. Her works are popular among fantasy and paranormal readers, with many rereading books several times after purchase.

From the back cover:

Portland has a ghost problem.

Sixteenyearold Claire wants her father back. His death left her only memories and an empty locket. After six difficult years in foster care, her vocabulary no longer includes "hope" and "trust".

Everything changes when Justin rides his magical horse into her path and takes her under his wing. Like the rest of the elite men who serve as Spirit Knights, he hunts restless ghosts that devour the living.

When an evil spirit threatens Claire's life, she'll need Justin's help to survive. And how could she bear the Knights' mark on her soul? Everybody knows Girls Can't Be Knights.

About Lee French:

Lee French lives in Olympia, WA, and is the author of several books, most notably the Maze Beset Trilogy, The Greatest Sin series (coauthored with Erik Kort), and assorted tales in her fantasy setting, Ilauris. She is an avid gamer and active member of the MythWeavers online RPG community, where she is known for her fondness for Angry Ninja Squirrels of Doom. In addition to spending much time there, she also trains yearround for the oneweek of glorious madness that is RAGBRAI, has a nice flower garden with one dragon and absolutely no lawn gnomes, and tries in vain every year to grow vegetables that don’t get devoured by neighborhood wildlife.

She is an active member of the Northwest Independent Writer’s Association and the Olympia Writer’s Coop, as well as serving as the coMunicipal Liaison for the NaNoWriMo Olympia Region.

Check Lee out at Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7154475.Lee_French 

More on the book at a later date, including the release schedule! 

Huw the Bard

My current reading speed is that of a five year old, what with extra work to fund the ongoing house patch up, and my addiction to painting plastic crack (warhammer minatures).

So it is with a satisfied grin that I have completed the excellent Huw the Bard by Connie Jasperson. Connie, as you may recall, is a writer and editor involved in Myrddin Publishing- in fact she edited books 3 and 5 of the Prism series. She is a major fantasy buff, and her clear intuition of the genre comes across in her work.

Huw the Bard is a prequel to Connie's The Last Good Knight, a book I hold in particular affection as it was one of the first Indie books I read several years ago when I first heard of self-publishing.

It follows the journey of Huw Olwyn, a bard fleeing the massacre of his fellows/family, as he escapes northward admidst political upheavals. The journey acts as a framework on which Jasperson fleshes out the history of Huw's world, and matures his character. The detail of the fantasy world is, as expected, very intricate and well constructed. The regional politics, the clans, how that sits with the feudal system and magic has enough detail to satisfy the reader without intruding on the flow.

The narrative is very cleverly done. I found it's style quite unique, almost as if the prose was part of a ballad that Huw was recounting. The humour is well done, and balances well with some fairly intense scenes of violence and sexual content. The fact these aspects are handled in a very sensitive and empathic way are a testament to Jasperson's skill as a writer. Personally I struggle with such scenes, and given one is a particularly harrowing marital rape, it is dealt with very adeptly. I do worry that such scenes have crept into modern fantasy works more since Game of Thrones, yet this aspect of the book is particularly key to Huw's maturation and vindication.

Inevitably the appearance of the various key characters in The Last Good Knight pepper the book, and help drive Huw's journey north. The encounters with monsters and creatures in the latter part of the book contrasts with the threats of evil nobles and their cronies in the earlier sections- and this progress in the story brought to mind elements of role playing games, and authors such as Jack Vance and Moorcock. A fitting pedigree for this excellent book to join.

Ultimately the book is a great introduction to the world, and a good fantasy read very different to many 'fantasy by numbers' currently out there now.