Daughter of the Empire

Book Description

Magic and murder engulf the realm of Kelewan. Fierce warlords ignite a bitter blood feud to enslave the empire of Tsuranuanni. While in the opulent Imperial courts, assassins and spy-master plot cunning and devious intrigues against the rightful heir. Now Mara, a young, untested Ruling lady, is called upon to lead her people in a heroic struggle for survival. But first she must rally an army of rebel warriors, form a pact with the alien cho-ja, and marry the son of a hated enemy. Only then can Mara face her most dangerous foe of all--in his own impregnable stronghold. An epic tale of adventure and intrigue. Daughter of the Empire is fantasy of the highest order by two of the most talented writers in the field today.

Customer Reviews:

Better Than The Original?.......2007-09-25

I read this book in junior high after judging it by the cover. I lucked out.

The novel is excellent, a rare (very rare) character-driven story among fantasy novels. Is it 'Shogun' in new clothes? Yes (very much so). Is it Orientalist? Yes. But the plot recycling and fan-service aimed at Orientaphiles slowly take a back seat to surprising character development and political intrigue. It is a new look at old themes, but isn't all literature/philosophy?

I read each book in the series and push them on others as a defense of the Fanasty genre. This is a story about real people (or mantis-like creatures) in a fantastic world. Read it, and you will never be able to dismiss all fantasy as trash... just most other fantasy.

A great work of fiction.......2007-09-04

Ripped from the temple where she was studying to be a priestess, Mara of the Acoma finds that her father and brother have been killed through intrigue, and the vultures are circling, prepared to finish off her family. In the Empire of Tsuranuanni, the Game of the Council pits family against family in a deadly competition for power and position, and the price of failure can be quite high. If she is to preserve her family name, and protect her soldiers from dying or becoming masterless ronin (which is worse), she must play the Game of the Council with more skill than Lords much older than herself.

I have been a big fan of Raymond Feist for many years now, and still remember when this book first came out. Unlike many of Mr. Feist's and Ms. Wurts' other books, magic does not play a large part in this story, only appearing somewhat late in the book. What this book is, is a fascinating story, set in a wonderfully different milieu, having intrigue and suspense at the very heart of it. So, if you are expecting powerful wizards, and dwarven armies, you will be disappointed.

However, if you interesting in a great work of fiction, one that will keep you on the edge of your seat, then this is the book for you. I loved this book - I have read it a number of time, and it still gets better. I can't recommend this book enough.

Political intrigue at its best!.......2007-05-15

This book saw the joining of forces of two acclaimed authors of fantasy. Set in the complex world of Kelewan that Feist gave us glimpses of in the Riftwar saga, Wurts brings her skill at weaving intrigue into dizzying layers.

To most, the sound of a political book set in a fantasy world may not sound exciting, yet I know of no place on earth where the wrong move in the political arena could result in your death and that of your family.

So it is, that on this knife edge of tension, a young girl assumes the position of Lady (ruler) of the ancient Acoma family, as a result of the betrayal of a powerful enemy in another family. With assets aplenty, but 37 soldiers left to guard it, Lady Mara must boldly plot to ensure the survival of her family name.

Turning enemies into unwitting allies through marriage, surviving assassins, and using every resource at her disposal, the book comes to a head in a confrontation against the one responsible for the death of her father and brother.

This book is truly worthy of the 5 stars, and is a tribute to the two masters who penned it. Brilliant in its enactment, enlightening in its descriptions of this tantalizingly familiar world (one cannot deny the asian feel to the Tsurani culture), well crafted in characterization, and truly amazing in its plot twists and turns, I highly recommend this book.

Of particular note is Arakasi, the Acoma Spy Master. He will feature more prominently in the next two books, and is a character not to be missed (or messed with!).

Great Series.......2006-07-19

I picked this book up for something new to read, I was facinated and captured with it. Read the entire Mistress of the Empire Series, it is very intriguing on how the politics of this society unravel and both writers actually make you a feel like you are a part of the book, through very detailed storylines. I was so taken by this book that I started to read Raymond Feist's other books and was sucked in once again from the other side of the "rift" this is a great read, I believe I have re-read Mistress of the Empire series three times.

Otherside.......2005-10-20

This is a very interesting first book to a trilogy following the trials of Mara. This trilogy is a companion piece to the Riftwar novels, as most of it occurs at the same time. What makes this interesting is the alien society of Mara's world. It certainly has a Japanese feel in some places, but it is also very unique in many ways. I like the fact that Feist did not just create an alien race to invade Midkemia through the rift and make them mindless evil beings. These people are every bit as diverse as the heroes and peoples from Magacian. This is a very well written book.

Average customer rating:

A Good Story
Very Good
Title Should Be "Bearkeeper's Grandson"

The Bearkeeper's Daughter
Gillian Bradshaw
Manufacturer: Houghton Mifflin (T)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Historical | Genre Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0395436206

Customer Reviews:

A Good Story.......2002-05-22

This novel should be entitled "The Grandson of the Bearkeeper" because the main character of the story is Juan, the bastard son of the Empress Theodora. It is a soft story about a young man who learned after the dead of his father the origin of his mother and went to Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine Empire where his mother is the omnipotent ruler of the empire and has to learn the habits and protocol of the court in order to pleased Theodora who has great plans for him. Through the pages of the novel, the extinguished empire get alive again and the reader can take a walk for the streets of Constantinople, once the center of the Byzantine art, culture and the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire later known as the Byzantine Empire.

Very Good.......2001-12-30

Bradshaw is wonderful at writing interesting, fast, novels about likeable intelligent, sensible characters in interesting times and places, novels which are extremely readable and a pleasure from first to last page. Usually her novels are slices of life in a period, not directly about the movers and shakers though in this case our main character gets to be very closely involved with the main movers and shakers of the Byzantine Empire.

This is one of my favorite Bradshaw novels. The novel is mostly about John, an alleged ... son Theodora had, and the glimpses of Theodora and Justinian are somehow more interesting than in other novels I had read about them. Wish I could do justice to the book with a good review ;) but it's a book whose charm is difficult to describe. If you like Bradshaw's novels, good luck at finding this one, it's very good. If you haven't read any of her novels, Island of Ghosts is another favorite and is much easily available, at least right now.

Title Should Be "Bearkeeper's Grandson".......1998-01-06

I originally read this book hoping it would shed more light on the life of Empress Theodora, who was a bearkeeper's daughter and circus actress/whore during the late Roman Empire (in Constantinople). Justinian, the emperor-to-be, fell in love with her, and shortly after they were married they were crowned emperor and empress (in the same arena where she once performed her circus tricks).

Although Bradshaw's novel is a well-written piece of historical fiction, her story focuses on Theodora's alleged bastard son, John. The reader, along with John, meets a much older Theodora near the end of her reign. The book follows John's rise from scribe to army commander to consul of the palace guard, describing in rich detail the quality of life in the Roman Empire circa 530 A.D.

Book Description

In Britannia’s Daughters, best-selling novelist Joanna Trollope examines the contribution of women in building and sustaining the British Empire. She draws on a vast range of sources, including diaries and letters home. She provides a panoramic picture of the countless women who departed Britain for India, Australia, the Far East, Canada and Africa — often in search of opportunities unavailable at home.

Here are penniless pioneers and governors’ wives, missionaries and prostitutes, explorers and army nurses. They people this book as they peopled the Empire — their astonishing courage and endurance, their remarkable personal stories are vividly and enthrallingly recaptured.

Average customer rating:

rich tapestry
What a great novel this could have been

The Eagle's Daughter
Judith Tarr
Manufacturer: Tor Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Historical | Genre Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Science Fiction | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0812550838

Book Description

Here in lush detail is the powerful story of the tenth-century Byzantine princess Theophano, who was sent to be the wife and Empress of Otto II, son of Otto the Great, the Holy Roman Emperor.It is a long journey from the surviving Roman Empire in the East to the devastated Empire in the West. Theophano must apply all her Byzantine skills to truly become the Empress of the West, winning first her new husband's devotion, and then the love of her new people,But when Otto II dies unexpectedly, laving the empire to his four-year-old son, the Empress Theophano must fight one of the greatest wars of succession of the Dark Ages. For Otto II's cousin, Henry of Burgandy, would have the Regency for himself and the Throne as well--if he can take them.

Customer Reviews:

rich tapestry.......2002-02-26

Judith Tarr has written another brilliant book! This rich tapestry of a story covers the shaky Roman Empire in the West and the Bzyantine Empire in the East. Good storyline, setting, charactors. A book I highly recommend to anyone who adores historical fiction and shuge sweeping novels.

What a great novel this could have been.......1997-12-27

As I settled down to read about a little known period of history--the Byzantine Empire and Otto II--I purred with anticipation. The characters are well rounded. The story plot is solid. But missing is the breath of focus, the width of historical sweep that we readers of historical fiction have come to expect from other historical authors likes Margaret George and Mary Stewart. There are good heavy doses of minute period detail, yet they lack the ricness we want to feel. It seems to be written for someone already familiar with the period and tale. Not bad, but not great.

Rebel Daughters: Women and the French Revolution (Publications of the University of California Humanities Research Institute)

Average customer rating:

Rebel Daughters: Women and the French Revolution (Publications of the University of California Humanities Research Institute)

Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Europe | History | Subjects | Books

Revolutionary | Historical Study | History | Subjects | Books

General | World | History | Subjects | Books

Women in History | World | History | Subjects | Books

General | Women's Studies | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books

History | Women's Studies | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 019507016X

Book Description

This interdisciplinary collection of essays examines the important and paradoxical relation between women and the French Revolution. Although the male leaders of the Revolution depended on the women's active militant participation, they denied to women the rights they helped to establish. At the same time that women were banned from the political sphere, "woman" was transformed into an allegorical figure which became the very symbol of (masculine) Liberty and Equality. This volume analyzes how the revolutionary process constructed a new gender system at the foundation of modern liberal culture.

Daughters of the Empire: A Memoir of Life and Times in the British Raj

Average customer rating:

Daughters of the Empire: A Memoir of Life and Times in the British Raj
Iris Macfarlane
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Irish | Ethnic & National | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Women | Specific Groups | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Asia | History | Subjects | Books

General | World | History | Subjects | Books

Social History | Historical Study | History | Subjects | Books

General | Women's Studies | Nonfiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0195678125

Book Description

This study shows how, by supporting their husbands, British women held together the greatest empire on earth, often to their private cost and pain. Based on a very rich collection of letters, diaries, and photographs, it is a story of class, snobbery, racism, but also of suffering and courage,
told in a vivid and moving way.

Average customer rating:

Unsettling
Cruel and Unusual Punishment
Brilliant beautiful writing, characterization falls short
Brutal - Bloody - Brilliant
BooksForWomen gives this title 5 stars

An Empire of Women
Karen Shepard
Manufacturer: Putnam Adult
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Domestic Life | Women's Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Mothers & Children | Women's Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Popular Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Book Clubs | Specialty Stores | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0399146679
Release Date: 2000-09-07

Customer Reviews:

Unsettling.......2001-10-11

Talk about a seriously hostile look at familial relationships between women! Disturbing, to be sure, but well-written and thought-provoking.

Cruel and Unusual Punishment.......2001-03-07

Like the revolution that forms the subtext of this book, the story of these women while interesting lacked that crucial element - characterization. The three principles were alternately whining, mean and supremely egotistical. The only one I vaguely sympathized with was the mother, Sumin? (Who could have become a person with a mother like she had?) The other two were not fleshed out enought to illicit any real feelings for them (the grandmother (Celine) at best two dimensional through her historied past - the daughter (Cameron) simply a narcissistic brat.

Perhaps I don't understand the Chinese mind well enough to appreciate the strange stinginess of these characters souls...

Brilliant beautiful writing, characterization falls short.......2001-02-14

This book had so much going for it, but I wanted it to be more than it was. The author's writing skills are magnificent. The relationships between the three generations as well as the two outside characters are complex. There is a lot of rich material here including Chinese thought and symbolism I especially found the grandmother's story and interior dialogue sequences compelling. The daughter and granddaughter never fully materialized for me even though there was a lot of dialogue and angst expressed by everyone, as if to spell out the meaning. I found some explanation for the characters' motivation but not entirely and not satisfying enough. I kept waiting for each "ah-ha" moment, and there were many, for it to all make sense, but it never did. Also, the injection of the little girl Alice into the family picture, while supposed to be the key to the family's deliverance, seemed gratuitous. All in all, this is a talented effort that ultimately does not deliver.

Brutal - Bloody - Brilliant.......2001-01-27

In this stunning debut offering, author Karen Shepherd tells the story of three very strange, alienated and ultimately cruel women. Celine Arneux, famed photographer -- her daughter Sumin -- and granddaughter Cameron are connected by blood only.

Forget the warm and cozy relationships of Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club. These three women of Chinese heritage are more akin to Madame Mao.

Celine is now retired and living in her beloved Paris. Sumin and her lover Grady live in the states, as do Cameron and her ward, the 6-year old Alice. The four females agree to meet at a cabin in Virginia where Celine took provocative photos of Cameron when she was a child.

Not one relationship in this family is healthy or based on any kind of true respect for its circle. Celine is aloof and cruel to her daughter. Sumin resents the one-time relationship her mother had with Cameron and has never really found her way in the world. Cameron boils over with anger at grandmother for taking such intimate photos of her and at her mother for allowing the photos to be taken. There are so many unresolved issues in this book that one needs a scorecard to keep up with them all.

Add to this caldron of raw anger and emotional immaturity the fate of the young Alice, whose mother has been forced to return to China without her. Each of the three women -- Celine, Sumin and Cameron -- wants to raise Alice and the battle over her future becomes bloody and extremely brutal.

An Empire of Women at once riveted and repulsed me. Although the author does an excellent job of telling the story, the subject matter and its devastation were a bit too much for my taste. The only character who truly evoked sympathy was Celine's Chinese mother -- and my heart broke for her on almost every page.

I look forward to other work from this author. She's got a voice and a gift -- my wish is that she finds something lighter to write about next time around. This story just wore me out.

BooksForWomen gives this title 5 stars.......2000-12-20

Had Artaud been a novelist, he might have written a book like Empire of Women.

Mannered, orderly, intensely cruel, this stunning debut novel depicts three generations of women, all single daughters of mothers who never married. The ghostly presence of a fourth woman, the great-grandmother, pervades the book. The deceased Huying, grandmother Celine, mother Sumin, granddaughter Cameron, plus Sumin's journalist lover Grady and six-year-old Alice, daughter of Cameron's best friend, spend a week together at their family cabin in Virginia, ostensibly in order to allow Grady to write a retrospective article about Celine's photography. In reality, the visit's purpose is to decide Alice's fate. Forced to return to China when her student visa ran out, Alice's mother left Alice in Cameron's care, believing that her daughter would be better off in America. While the choice of Cameron as a care-giver makes this a dubious proposition, it is Alice's presence that precipitates revolution in this aptly-titled Empire.

Celine, rich, self-absorbed, famous imagier, of Franco-Chinese descent, rules her empire with an absolute hand, through cruelty, psychological manipulation, and control of the purse strings. Only her granddaughter, Cameron, subject of Celine's famous books of photographs, has ever escaped her grasp. Somehow, at twelve, Cameron's magic disappeared, and Celine has not taken a photograph since then. The woman in the middle, Sumin, Celine's daughter and Cameron's mother, has spent her life waiting, hovering, constantly in the shadow of her famous mother. Just one example shows exactly how dysfunctional this group of women is. Celine, angered by a minor infraction of an eight-year-old Sumin's, locks Sumin in a darkroom. Sumin retaliates by chopping everything she can lay her hands on into bits, by flushing all the photographic chemicals down the sink, and by destroying film, negatives, and prints. This incident is cited as proof, not of Celine's abuse of her daughter, but as an indication of Sumin's "true disturbance."

The case of Cameron, the subject of Celine's odd, semi-erotic, provocative, and stunning photographs, is far darker. "The first time I felt a man put his fingers inside of me, it was like watching someone look through one of our books," she tells Celine. "You gave me to anyone who wanted to look." Later she says, "I can't get myself back." Yet Cameron's hope for salvation through Alice is just as selfish as Celine's exploitation of Cameron, for Cameron (as Celine points out) is not thinking of the child's welfare, but only of her own.

The cultural dismissal of women is a constant subtext throughout the book. Lest anyone believe, since Chinese women are no longer forced to bind their feet, that modern attitudes have conquered oppression, let me recount a true incident. My husband's grandfather wrote the history and ancestry of the Yuan family out for us in English. My son's name is part of this document, but not my daughter's, since she will not be a considered part of the bloodline after she marries. In Empire of Women, Celine gives a piece of jade that should have been passed only to a son, to Alice. Is it a gesture of recognition that the historically poor status of women is changing? Perhaps. Every motivation in Empire is suspect. Every gesture is layered with meaning. This book is an outstanding achievement, and we can only hope for more books from a phenomenal writer.

Book Description

Winner of the 2004 Book Award from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and the 2003 Roland H. Bainton Prize for Literature from the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference.

Our common definition of literacy is the ability to read and write in one language. But as Margaret Ferguson reveals in Dido's Daughters, this description is inadequate, because it fails to help us understand heated conflicts over literacy during the emergence of print culture. The fifteenth through seventeenth centuries, she shows, were a contentious era of transition from Latin and other clerical modes of literacy toward more vernacular forms of speech and writing.

Fegurson's aim in this long-awaited work is twofold: to show that what counted as more valuable among these competing literacies had much to do with notions of gender, and to demonstrate how debates about female literacy were critical to the emergence of imperial nations. Looking at writers whom she dubs the figurative daughters of the mythological figure Dido—builder of an empire that threatened to rival Rome—Ferguson traces debates about literacy and empire in the works of Marguerite de Navarre, Christine de Pizan, Elizabeth Cary, and Aphra Behn, as well as male writers such as Shakespeare, Rabelais, and Wyatt. The result is a study that sheds new light on the crucial roles that gender and women played in the modernization of England and France.

Missionary Daughter: Witness to the End of the Ottoman Empire

Average customer rating:

Window into a forgotten past

Missionary Daughter: Witness to the End of the Ottoman Empire
Dorothea Chambers Blaisdell
Manufacturer: 1st Books Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Historical | Genre Fiction | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1403304726

Customer Reviews:

Window into a forgotten past.......2003-03-27

Dorothea Chambers Blaisdell, born in 1896, grew up in southeastern Turkey, daughter of a pioneer Congregational misionary couple. She left this manuscript when she died in 1985. Her son and daughter have now had it published. The world of Christian missions has changed dramatically since the early 20th Century. Its leisurely pace, with delightful summers in the mountains, is long gone. Dorothea's story is very personal, and in that is its delight. She tells relatively little of her father's work, but enough to know that he was a powerful man of faith.
One of the books great values is the heart-wrenching story of the persecution of the Armenians with which Nesbitt Chambers, her father, worked. That painful period of history is usually forgotten. Dorothea brings it to life.
Her story ends as a young adult. After being educated in America, she went back to Turkey as a YWCA worker, again to witness social disruption. Her story is sub-titled "Witness to the Fall of the Ottoman Empire." I highly recommend this very personal story of that tumultuous time in history.

Empire's Daughter (The Chronicles of Kydan, Book 1)

Average customer rating:

waste of time
Well.. looks like a great set up for a series
Uneventful
Unfocused, unredeemed and utter dreck
excellent fantasy

Empire's Daughter (The Chronicles of Kydan, Book 1)
Simon Brown
Manufacturer: DAW
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Fantasy | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books

All 4-for-3 Deals | 4-for-3 Books Store | Stores | Books
Similar Items:

ASIN: 0756402832

Book Description

A brand-new fantasy saga from the author of the Keys of Power series

Third Prince Maddyn Kevleren is one of the few members of his royal family who cannot Wield-cannot access the realm of magic. When he crosses the most powerful magician in the empire, he will be forced to set out across the sea to find the new colony of Kydan to escape her revenge...but even the wide ocean may not be enough to protect him.

Customer Reviews:

waste of time.......2006-07-03

The author sets up an interesting source of conflict: magicians that can exercise their magic only by sacrificing someone they love -- the greater the love, the more powerful the magic they can then wield. Everything else about the book sucks; the characterizations are shallow, none of the characters are particularly likeable, and the plot meanders pointlessly. What a waste of time (and trees).

Well.. looks like a great set up for a series.......2005-05-16

I really think that Simon Brown has gotten some bad press or someething. None of his books seem to get a chance.

This book is really pretty good. I have a few problems with the story line and some of the names are pretty close to the same so it can tend to get a little confusing. The basic premise of the story is not really what is on the back cover. Yes that is part of the story but not the main line in my opinion. The main part of the story is the strife between all the family members and the family that resides in the other country.

Don't judge this book by the synopsis since it does not do it justice. This is a above average book and will certainly fill the time as you are waiting for others to be published.

Uneventful.......2005-05-02

The story lacks any meaningful characters and no feelings. A good story can express itself to its reader through different feelings. I would also add that the only thing consistant in this story is the fact the author wants to pound into your head that Third Prince Maddyn Kevleren is the greatest general of his land, but the author forgets to actually let the man be the general. Great generals shouldn't second guess and the fact he does on several occasions just shows that the author can't even follow his own story.

Unfocused, unredeemed and utter dreck.......2005-03-13

I cannot recommend this book to anyone. Too many characters (a lot of which are completely unlikeable) and a plot that goes nowhere. I finished this and asked myself why did I even bother. A pity since the author's earlier trilogy, (The Keys of Power) was quite good.

excellent fantasy .......2005-02-27

With the death of Empress Hetha Kevleren, regions of the powerful far flung Empire of Hamilay see an opportunity to use the magical force of the Sefid to secede. However, to be successful at Wielding the magic, sacrifice must occur; the closer the Wielder cherishes the victim, the more powerful the usage of the Sefid. The Kevleren have been the most powerful practitioners, but many believe that the Duchess Yunara is the strongest magician today though her sister Lerena is the new Empress.

General Third Prince Maddyn Kevleren is unable to work the magic of the Sefid as his relatives can especially his former lover and second cousin Yunara. He tries to make up for his inadequacy through military prowess, but knows that in spite of his being the top general in the empire he remains an embarrassment to his friends. As he angers Yunara, Maddyn knows he must flee to protect loved ones from her wrath. He accepts an opportunity to strengthen the empire's stronghold in the New World, knowing that the unknown is less dangerous than the known.

Simon Brown, renowned for his Keys of Power trilogy, provides fantasy fans with a terrific new series with the fabulous Book One of the Chronicles of Kydan. The well written story line moves on two fronts as Maddyn tries to serve the new Empress while keeping his loved ones safe from retaliation; the two royal siblings have troubles starting with a Rivald revolt and massacre aided by magic that seems impossible to have occurred the way it apparently did. Because the key powerful cast seems real, they make magic appear normal so that epic fantasy readers will enjoy Mr. Brown's latest saga.

Harriet Klausner

Books:

Books Index

Books Home

Recommended Books