warrior women in land of farmer priests and monotheistic virgin sorcerous

I read this sequel more because I was interested in the world than in the characters.

While the characters, both main and some secondary, are more nuanced than they were in "Frostflower and Thorn", none are yet really three-dimensional, and the Bad Guys are rather unrelentingly so.

For books in which religion (of a sort) is so vital, there is little emphasis on it, or on why the various creeds have such a low tolerance for each other. There are some implications...but they are not really addressed. It was interesting that polytheism was here the "establishment" view!

I really don't think the world, as written, would work. It's patriarchal, to the point of (some) men having multiple wives, and while women can inherit and rule, they can do so only in the absence of a male heir. The people who are not in the ruling class marry monogamously, and seem to mostly be married. OK, fine so far, but...

ALL the warriors are women. And there are a lot of them! This would, I'd guess, pull at least a third of non-noble women out of the marriage market... so what happens with the men they would have married? there seems to be no excess of them, and there would be. I will note that women are warriors explicitly because men are "too important" to be so, and the status of the warriors is in decline; they used to also be priestesses, and now are not. It does remain a fact that one man can impregnate several women at the same time, while the reverse is not true; therefore, putting at least a third of your society's women in regular peril means that the population would likely decline, not increase.

There's also the reality that those who have the weapons and the training can pretty easily push their way to the top. Why don't the warriors here? Especially those with enough historical knowledge to regret their diminishing status?

I gave this book 3 stars, because while it did raise interesting questions, it didn't do much of anything with them. Also, the 2 main character sorceri got tiresome. ( )

Accused of murder and sentenced to be stripped of his powers, the sorcerer WindBourne only wants to clear his name - or at least announce his innocence. The warrior Thorn, who helped him escape against her better judgment, wants her name cleared, as well. Thorn's sorceress friend FrostFlower is prepared to help both. But while sorcerers of both sexes are roundly mistrusted and feared by the farmer folk & priests, they're actually very limited by what their very particular ethics will allow them to do, say, and eat. If Frost and WindBourne can't find the will to sacrifice, or at least bend, some of their scruples, someone (else) may wind up dead.

A roughly written fantasy. The contrast between the meek and mild, ethical vegetarian, FrostFlower, and the coarser, far more pragmatic and violent Thorn is an interesting juxtaposition. But having encountered Frost and Thorn before in more tightly composed short stories in the Sword and Sorceress series edited by Marion Zimmer Bradley, I was expecting more... well, more. There's a bit of suspense, and a moment or two of tension, but on the whole things stay fairly predictable. ( )