Warrior Women: Bowdancer Book 3 by Janie Franz

Title: Warrior Women: Bowdancer Book 3
Author: Janie Franz

Author Site

Buy Link
Publisher: Breathless Press

Genre: GLBT/Romance/F-F

Length: 146 pgs.
Reviewed by: Kim Clune

RATINGS FOR:

Cover: 3

Presentation: 5

Editing: 4

Story: 5

Writing Ability: 5

Overall Card Rating: 

About The Book:

Jan-nell the bowdancer, now pregnant with her second child, and her daughter, Mira-nell, trek up a mountain where bards’ tales have said a village of warrior women exists. Jan-nell makes this trip in winter—and in her condition—in order to find a place for Mira-nell where the child’s precocious abilities will be accepted. The women on the mountain, though, are not fighters or even man-haters. They have chosen to live apart from the world in a village of only women, led by a sisterhood of hunters. Chandro, a beautiful trackfinder, rescues Jan-nell and her daughter, offering them a home and the promise of love.

The Review:

But for the company of her young daughter, Mira-nell, Jan-nell has always been the lone and stoic outsider in search of belonging. Even still, she is consistently grounded in a deep sense of self, a self that she often – if cautiously – opens to exploration.

Jan-nell had once believed that she and her daughter might find their place with Khrin, a handsome and kind traveling bard returning to his family’s village. She and Khrin traded passion for familial love but, without that flame, the home fires cooled. Jan-nell becomes weary of Khrin’s lust for men while she is carrying his child and Mira-nell is often ridiculed by peers who cannot grasp the depth of her sharp wit. Together, Jan-nell and Mira-nell make off silently, embarking on a difficult journey to seek solace within a secluded mountain village of warrior women.

The strong, beautiful Chandro, a tracker, discovers a troubled Jan-nell on the mountain path. When they reach safety, the curious village women, with their fractured history and lack of a knowledgeable healer, must combine their individual talents to help Jan-nell prepare for the delivery of her babe. Intrigued by Jan-nell, they share their sexual flirtations as well, taking Jan-nell to places she never dreamed existed.

What I love about this series is that the characters are not simply beautiful in physically intriguing ways. They also have a great deal of substance. When a pair is drawn together, it is often to solve or relieve a deep personal struggle, if only for a few fleeting moments, and the effects ripple through the community in such beautiful ways. Jan-nell teaches the village much about themselves and the healing they can perform while Chandro teaches Jan-nell to accept the help she so often offers others. The two also discover pleasure in each other simply for the sake of it. Still, they cannot deny that pleasure sparks emotional connection.

Has Jan-nell finally found a place where she is needed, cared for, can care for others, and where her daughter is respected for her varied skills? For a time, perhaps. Once again, a twist of fate allows culture to trump individual relationships, even when those beautiful relationships breathe life into an entire village. Jan-nell must make the most difficult decision of her life as a mother, sister-kin, lover, and as wife to Khrin with another life beckoning in his village below. Will she stay? Will she go? And at what cost?

I bid you great enjoyment as you read to find out.

Pagan Elements:

Franz incorporates extensive use of herbal remedies for healing as well as village dance and lore. Careful attention is paid to their beautiful descriptions, where these herbs are available, and which can be used in substitute. The Warrior Women are as closely connected with the earth as Jan-nell is, albeit in different ways.

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Disclaimer: Due to FTC regulations, any book reviewed on this site was sent for free by the author to The Pagan & The Pen. We are not paid to give reviews by Author or Publisher. Once review has been made, said books are deleted.

The Wayfarer’s Road: Bowdancer Book 2 by Janie Franz

THE PAGAN & THE PEN BOOK REVIEWS

Title: The Wayfarer’s Road: Bowdancer Book 2
Author: Janie Franz

Author Site

Buy Link
Publisher: Breathless Press

Genre: Romance/Erotic

Length: 102 pgs.
Reviewed by: Kim Clune

RATINGS FOR:

Cover: 2

Presentation: 4

Editing: 5

Story: 5

Writing Ability: 5

Overall Card Rating: 

                                                   

About The Book: The Bowdancer Saga continues with The Wayfarer’s Road. Jan-nell, now a woman traveling alone with her precocious young daughter, meets a handsome wandering bard. But he is carrying his own secrets along with the priceless chance at hope for her and her child to belong.

The Review: Fully enamored with The Bowdancer, the first book of this saga, I looked forward to reviewing The Wayfarer’s Road with great anticipation. Once more, author Janie Franz did not disappoint. Not in the least. Her writing, characters and plot are exquisite. My single, lingering wish would be for an accurate depiction of Jan-nell, an earthier and less frosted character, on the cover.

Jan-nell is the young and naive healer who left the stifling safety of her village in a fit of romance with Bastin, a traveling ruffian who challenged Jan-nell to acknowledge her inner-most desires. In the space between book 1 and 2, Bastin continues to chase passionately after far-fetched dreams in untethered travels, leaving Jan-nell to give birth and raise their now 4-year-old daughter, Mira-nell, alone.

The road has been less than kind to Jan-nell as she scrapes by with invigorated strength to support what is left of her fractured family. Unable to return to her own village, she and Mira-nell sleep under cover of the forest between unfamiliar villages in need of a traveling midwife. Jan-nell’s daughter, inheriting Jan-nell’s determination and ability to read people, as well as the quick wit and biting honesty of her father, has learned to fend well for herself too.

We join mother and daughter as they seek shelter from the rain in a stable adjoined to the local inn. Here, the innkeeper mistakes the single mother for a whore, hurling insults and providing only the very least of his generosity – which includes a late-night visit with his band of bullying patrons for ill-perceived services.

Enter Khrin, a handsome, gentle, traveling merry-maker who charms brothel audiences with his lute and lyrics. Taking a shine to Jan-nell, he helps her thwart the unwelcome, late-night advances of the innkeeper’s owner.

As the three flee together, they become reliant upon one another, traveling deeper into danger and having to draw upon one another’s skills for survival. Together they fend off not only the randy innkeeper, but a band of brutal villagers angered by Khrin’s affinity for men, a disillusioned kidnapper, hunger, bruises, boredom, cold and loneliness.

While Jan-nell, Mira-nell and Khrin couldn’t be more different, they complement each other well and, in a short span of time, they learn they are not so different after all. Aside from a life deeply rooted in song (but for young Mira-nell whose only interest to learn is on an as-needed basis), each is misunderstood, longs for belonging, and only cautiously trusts the other.

With childhood innocence, curiosity and honesty that cuts to the quick of social construct, young Mira-nell is instrumental in teaching Jan-nell and Khrin to question the comfort of their ingrained perceptions, including those of sexual orientation.

Khrin’s intentions and Jan-nell’s ponderance of their possibility reveals that one must honestly assess inner desire and realize that there are no rules of engagement but for those imposed upon us. If the interaction between these complex characters seems eerily confusing, the author is simply asking us, in a not-so-subtle way, to challenge the comfort of our own limiting assumptions.

Will Jan-nell, Mira-nell and Khrin satisfy their need for love in one another as friend, father, brother or lover? Will they find utter rejection or the safety of acceptance in the village Khrin once abandoned near the hills of the Warrior Women? Read on to find out - but be forewarned. This story will leave you ravenous for the saga’s third book, Warrior Women, which I’ll delve into next with tremendous curiosity.

Pagan Elements:

Jan-nell often references the healing power of herbal treatments, drawing from the natural powers of an earthly yield. She also draws on the healing power of traditional village song and dance. In particular, she employs a song illustrating the stages of a woman’s life, which is, ironically, used to heal Khrin’s bruises through stretching.

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Disclaimer: Due to FTC regulations, any book reviewed on this site was sent for free by the author to The Pagan & The Pen. We are not paid to give reviews by Author or Publisher. Once review has been made, said books are deleted.

Reviewer Top Pick: The Bowdancer by Janie Franz

PAGAN & PEN REVIEW

Title:  The Bowdancer

Author:  Janie Franz

Author Site

Buy Link

Publisher: Breathless Press

Genre: Breathless Press

Length: 31 pgs 

Other:  M/F

Pagan Elements: Yes 

Reviewed by: Kim Clune

About The Book: 

Jan-nell, a young healer and keeper of village lore, fears she will never find a worthy child to train and replace her as the next bowdancer. Nor does she think she will find a man worthy of her love. When a village wedding is interrupted by four strange men, one mawled by a mountain lion in need of help, Jan-nell treats his injuries. During the men’s stay, their arrogant, intelligent rogue leader, Bastin, questions the bowdancer's opinions on life, freedom and love. By doing so, he stirs her desire for these things and more.

The Review:

Janie Franz weaves a beautiful and intricate tapestry of duty, destiny, tradition and exploration of the soul into The Bowdancer. Her writing wastes not a single word and gives a strong, unique voice to Jan-nell, the loyal yet conflicted bowdancer and village healer. While stories of personal internal struggle are timeless, Franz breathes fresh life into this one, creating a rich and curious world among a non-specific tribe or creed.

All her life, Jan-nell is judged and defined by what she is not. During her tomboyish young adulthood, Jan-nell’s mother attempts to refine her femininity by keeping her chestnut hair long to balance her fair, thin and shapeless form. As Jan-nell matures, she learns to balance her physical insecurities with the confidence she carries in her bowdancing. Still, Jan-nell’s community sees her as an “other” when she colors her skin with dark, herbal oil rather than the traditionally colorful body paint of her predecessor at seasonal rituals. While her innovative and simple expression of connection with the earth and the One feels natural to Jan-nell, her mother-kin eventually asks, “Do you not fear you will make yourself so different that no man will approach you?” Jan-nell has hardly made herself different. She is different. Powerful, creative and intelligent with interests as varied and balanced as her well oiled bow, she simply has yet to find an equal to love within the confines of the village.

Embracing her community role, if not the community itself, Jan-nell attempts to resign herself to her life’s only known purpose, to be “the bow that sings the song of the One.” This devotion, although noble, conflicts with her fear of never marrying and having children of her own, a future she only half hopes to find. Not having found a child to train as her replacement for the next ten years may doom her to a fruitless marriage to the only typically available partner at that age, a widower.

It isn’t until Bastin and his band of bandits enter the village that burgeoning questions push Jan-nell to concretely define her desires. Bastin is the first to see her essence beyond her sense of duty and the first to demand her honest reflection. Uncharmed by his boastful stories, Jan-nell emotionally disarms Bastin and demands honesty from him as well. The two reflect each other like mirrors, one allowing the other to see his or her self plainly. This new dance is not that of a bowdancer nor of innocent love, but one of powerful equals vying for each other’s trust in a world of unlikely possibility. To say what happens next would spoil the story but it’s well worth finding out.

The Bowdancer is wonderful read and just short enough to devour every delicious word in one sitting. I highly recommend it and look forward to following Jan-nell’s next adventures in The Wayfarer’s Road.

Cover (Rated 1-10): 2 – A pretty face with frosted blue eye shadow would better suit the Twilight series than The Bowdancer. Jan-nell is a tribal-type woman rooted in all things natural,  prefering earthly pigments to decorative body paint and a doeskin to a black, velvet hood with red satin lining. Interestingly, this cover re-enacts the bowdancer’s struggle, pushing her to dutifully appeal to the greater romance audience yet denying acceptance of her true identity.

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Disclaimer: Due to FTC regulations, any book reviewed on this site was sent for free by the author to The Pagan & the Pen. We are not paid to give reviews by Author or Publisher. Once review has been made, said books are deleted.