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Northers Girl
By Elizabeth A. Lynn
Ace Books
Paperback - 480 pages
Reissue edition (May 2000)
List Price: $14.00
I read the book first when I was seventeen and the action
and the athmosphere absorbed me so much that I didn't even
notice the book had heavy gay and lesbian content. I was rather
intrigued to find out how the protagonist's drug using friend who was born as "neither male or female" really looked like naked.
Shure women had usually female lovers, men had sex with men,
but being no stigma, no struggle, no discrimination involved
and neither being labeled as something different, I was too innocent to notice: Only a few years later I came to notice that
30% of all the SF/F books I owned featured gay or lesbian protagonists.
The book is actually the climax of a three volume series, the
other two being "Tonor's Keep" and "Dancer's of Arun"
all having been reprinted this year.
Book description
Down in the Delta, the martial arts and the power of the Red Clan have declined but have also been incorporated partially into general
culture. Contrary to the first books of the Tonor series Northern Girl focuses on a female protagonist, but gives also ample space to male
characters.
Northern Girl tells the story of a young bond servant whose emerging telephatic gifts might eventually lead her far away from every home
she knows. While she struggles with the question whether she should stay or follow her visions of the north she is caught in midst of a dangerous political intrigue.
Leaving might also mean that she could loose her lover, who is captain of the guard of her "Mistress".
Northern girl revisits the lands of the first two books and closes the circle as Tonor Keep was once founded by a renegade smith from
her southern city. The warm atmosphere of an almost utopian society where men and women can live and love each other freely and without any barrier to create families (including numerous children) in various gay, lesbian and even sometimes straight family arrangements is cleverly balanced with action.
This and the detailed descriptions of characters, the world and the landscape make "Northern Girl" a pleasant summer read, I have
read this book numerous times and am glad to see it reprinted again.
It is a book I can highly recommend to any lower of martial art and utopian fantasy.
Age level: Adult but also due to the young age of the main protagonist (all the others are adults) suitable for
young readers 14 and onward.
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