Sword Masters

The Sword Masters #1

by Selina Rosen

The Sword Masters have strict rules about who can and who can not be one of them, but Tarius is determined to avenge the death of her father and she doesn't care about the Jethrick's archaic rules or about breaking them. Especially the one that says women can't wield steel.Her parents were both great warriors, and upon her father's death at the hands of their ancestral enemy, the Amalites, his cause becomes hers. Like her father before her, she joins the Sword Masters academy. But while he only kept one secret from the, she is keeping two. When the headmaster's beautiful, willful daughter Jena falls in love with Tarius, thinking she's a man, she know that this, and not an enemy's sword or spear, will be her undoing.Tarius leads the Armies of the King in battle after battle, securing a victory for him against the Amalites. Then, though she saves the King's life--not once, but twice--she knows that not even this will stop his wrath when he learns all that she truly is."Selina Rosen writes an action adventure with a heroine who is as hard as nails, and just as sharp. I guarantee, you won't want to put this one down." --Laura J. Underwood, author of Ard Magister and The Black Hunter.

Genres: Fantasy, LGBT, Queer, Lesbian, Romance, Shapeshifters

308 pages, Paperback

First published January 29, 2008

About the author

Selina Rosen’s short fiction has appeared in several magazines and anthologies including Sword & Sorceress, Witch Way To The Mall, Turn The Other Chick, the two newest Thieves’ World anthologies, Aoife’s Kiss, and Here Be Dragons.

Her novels include How I Spent The Apocalypse, Black Rage, Queen Of Denial, Strange Robby, and Jabone’s Sword.

Her mystery novels, Bad Lands, and Bad City, the first two Holmes and Storm Mysteries, were co-written with Laura J. Underwood.

One of Selina’s recent projects was a novelization of the first Duncan and Mallory graphic novel that was co-written by Robert Asprin and Mel. White, tentatively entitled Duncan and Mallory I.

Selina was honored by Deep South Con/FenCon in Dallas this past September where she was awarded the Phoenix Award.

Check out her website for her continuing series, The House. It’s posted in episodes—approximately two per month.

In her capacity as editor-in-chief of Yard Dog Press, Ms. Rosen has edited several anthologies, including the five award-winning Bubbas Of The Apocalypse anthologies and two collections of “modern” fairy tales including the Stoker-nominated Stories That Won’t Make Your Parents Hurl.

Reviews

[MaxDisaster · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars

A well done lesbian Sword and Sorcery fantasy story. Enjoyable to read, good fight scenes, just enough background information about the "universe" to immerse us in it without going to Tolkien-like level of detail and exactly the correct amount of the cheesy overdramatic tone, that makes Sword and Sorcery fantasy books so entertaining.
(On the downside it also adopted the genres tendency to make the MC's make a moronic decision of epic proportions, albeit with good intentions).

The only thing I would really change is the cover. It doesn't create the greatest impression. If nothing else, the "papyrus" title annoys the hell out of me and it's also weirdly pushed to the side.

[XR · Rating 4 out of 5]

Firstly, I agree with @MaxDisaster in saying the cover of this book does not do any favours for the world Rosen has created.

Secondly, this was all sorts of awesome. Okay, I should have started with this point but It's almost six AM and I've yet to sleep. Tarius sure makes some horrid decisions and pretending to be a man, killing her enemies and saving questionable brethren is not one of them. I liked the character arc for Jena the most though... the once naive girl coming into her own and basically owning everyone around her as she woman's up!

Anyway... I'm not sure I'm making much sense but there you have it. Word.

[Dani · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely loved this book! I was captivated from beginning to end!! My heart went through the ringer of emotions from the time Jena and Tarius met until they were reunited. I love them so much and I was so happy to finally have them together and stronger than ever with no secrets between them. I didn’t want the book to end but was lucky to find the series after a few books were already written. I can’t wait to read more.

[Pauline allen · Rating 4 out of 5]

My my my

This book made me laugh and cry. You really get into the characters and the plot. The battles and the women, and anyone with magic will make you laugh. FOUR STARS.

[Kathryn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good Points: KICK ASS LESBIAN PROTAGONISTS.

The Kartik are accepting of m/m and f/f pairings.

Kick. Ass. Lesbian. Protagonists.

Realistic rage at all the crap that goes down.

It’s a fun, easy read.

Bad Points: Errrrrrr. There are a lot of skeevy points that I’m going to warn people about.

Tarius’ spends most of the novel lying about her gender. She is female and is a lesbian but in order to become a swordsmaster must dress like a man. She never reveals her true gender to Jenna and in fact, when Jenna pushes for Tarius’ to have penetrative sex with her Tarius’ has another man take her place.

Tragon, who takes her place, is sexually aggressive with Jenna and had previously attempted to rape her. Jenna gets pregnant through their sex. She later loses the baby because of abuse at Tragon’s hands.

The story gets bogged down after this as Jenna and Tarius try to recover and find their way back together but once they ARE it picks up again.

[Kim · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good fantasy adventure. Some of the transitions are confusing and a little weak, but the action scenes are good and help hold it together. The characters interact well too. It rates somewhere between 3 and 4 stars for me but is leaning towards a 4.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tarius, of the land of Kartik, travels to the neighboring land of Jethrik to join their swordmaster academy. Both his parents were killed by the Amalites, and Jethrik is currently at war with the Amalites, so Tarius wants to kill Amalites. He quickly distinguishes himself as an expert with the sword, and is noticed by Darian, the headmaster, and by King Persius. Tarius also attracts the notice of Jena, Darian’s daughter, who only has eyes for Tarius. He tries everything possible to push her away, to no avail. Tarius is hiding a huge secret, which will not stay secret forever; Tarius is a woman.

Jethrik is a land of rigidly defined gender roles; among them is the absolute prohibition on women wielding steel. Tarius leads several successful campaigns against the Amalites. Persius gets the Amalites to leave Jethrik land, and agree to a peace treaty (over Tarius’ strong objections). Beings like the Amalites, with a philosophy of Convert or Die, will not be bound by a piece of paper; they will be back.

Eventually, Tarius’ secret is revealed, and, as expected, Persius, Darian and Jena hit the roof. Tarius is to be immediately executed, by being dragged throughout the kingdom, tied to the back of a horse. She is helped by friends, nursed back to health, and heads home back to Kartik. Jena is forced to marry Tragon, a man she despises. After her repeated refusal to let him into her bed, Tragon unintentionally kills her unborn child, and Jena kills Tragon. For a wife to kill her husband is a major offense, so Jena is convinced that fleeing to Kartik, to see if Tarius will take her back, is a really good idea.

This is an excellent piece of writing. It’s a sword and sorcery novel with an emphasis more on the "sword" than the "sorcery." The reader will not be disappointed.

[Robin Burrows · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the story of a woman pretending to be a man so she can be trained as a sword master and fight in the war against the nation that killed her family. From the first page you are drawn in to the main character's struggle to keep her secrets while reaching her goal. The protagonist is an upright character who tries to do the right thing, even if it means breaking the rules. She helps many people throughout the book, but as any good conflicted character, she has trouble following her advice in her own life which builds the conflict in the story.

[Ruby Ridge · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an object lesson in how to write Sword and Sorcery. This could have been another ho-hum 2 star book on the girl, dresses as boy to become a warrior and falls in love with the king/prince/tutor or whatever and we would have fallen asleep and DNFed the book after five chapters. But Selina Rosen has created a truly great character in Tarius, who is not only a great (greatest of all time?) warrior but is hardly likely to fall in love with any of her male companions as she is lesbian and the complications this causes is intertwined with the battles and strategy to produce a truly great book. only fault I found in the book is about half way through when Tarius make a staggeringly stupid decision (or series of decisions) - but no spoilers, please read this book as really excellent Sword and Sorcery novels are very few and this is one of them.
I am looking forward to the second in the series and hopefully will not be disappointed but this book has set an incredibly high standard.

[Lacie Carmody · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this book up at Conquest a few years back and shelved it, but decided to give it a go this last week since Selina Rosen was at Archon and I was going to be sitting on panels with a few of the Yard Dog Press writers. This book was not only entertaining but delightfully fun to read. The characters are well constructed, and the story kept me fascinated which is something I usually struggle with when it comes to hard sword and sorcery style novels. This is definitely worth checking out, you will not be disappointed. In fact as I write this I'm excited to read the next one in the series!

[Gail Carriger · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story of a woman with a very particular set of skills, and some seriously dangerous secrets, who infiltrates not only a school for swordsmen but a foreign culture, in an effort to build alliances and defeat a common enemy. Disguised as a man she is forced, eventually, to marry a woman, and must face the consequences of her own lies on a personal, as well as a professional, level. So yeah, killer lesbians with lots of sword fighting.

[Meredith McLaughlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really don't know how many times I've read this book, but the characters are compelling and the world is amazing. Selina is a master storyteller and this series is well worth reading, again and again...now onto the next book.

[Eric · Rating 1 out of 5]

Couldn't finish.

[Heather Henkel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book

I really liked this world and characters. I'm really glad this is the beginning of several books! If you like sword and board stories, this is for you!

[Rusalky · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tarius is such a well-written, unconventional character, I couldn't get enough.
This quickly became my favorite book, entertaining, engaging and fresh.

[Robert Runte · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Sword Masters chronicles the adventures of young Tarius, from admission to the Sword Master's academy, through being knighted for saving the King's life, to becoming warlord of all of Jethrik's armies. If you enjoy stories of the young hero's rise through the ranks, with lots of epic battles, then this book is for you. There is enough swordplay to satisfy the most demanding fan of swashbuckling adventure.

If you prefer your swordplay set against a magical backdrop, then this is definitely the book for you. The berserker werewolves, and the occasional invocation of magic, clearly qualifies this novel as sword & sorcery.

If your tastes run more to romantic fantasies, where the young couple has to endure long separations while the hero rides off to battle, leaving the heroine vulnerable to the machinations of the villainous rival, then this book is a must have. There are enough dastardly deeds, lovers' misunderstandings, and outright betrayals, followed by emotional reconciliations (not to mention make-up sex) to satisfy the most jaded fan of romantic tear-jerkers.

If, on the other hand, you prefer character development to mere action, then this book is...still a pretty good bet. Tarius may be the perfect warrior, but comes with a Shakespearian-style tragic flaw &emdash; the one blind spot that inevitably leads to the character's downfall. I was, admittedly, a little worried there that the last half of the novel was going to get bogged down in maudlin Greek Tragedy, as Tarius insists on going down a doomed path against the advice of all his friends. Tarius' actions at this point are so spectacularly wrong-headed that it is almost annoying, but the fall is relatively short-lived, and the story quickly gets back on track with the slaughter of yet more enemies.

Of course, some of you might be bored with the yet another "young-hero-makes-good-by- slaughtering-everyone-in-sight" novel, even when it is reasonably well written. In which case — you guessed it — this book might still be the book for you. Rosen has taken the standard S&S tropes and turned them inside out, producing a rather subversive fantasy. Although others have tried similar twists before, Rosen pulls it all off within a fast-paced narrative that keeps readers glued to the page.

I did have a few minor quibbles with the book: First, don't read the backcover blurb. I understand and appreciate why the publisher had to include so many spoilers in the write up in order to be fair to buyers, but you will enjoy the book more if you don't know anything about the story going in. (I've gone to some length to avoid any spoilers in this review.) If you like the S&S genre at all, just trust me on this and buy the book

Second, I questioned some of the details of the various battle scenes: crossbows have greater range than long bows? Heads get cut off shoulders that easily? Tarius is a military genius but puts the royal family and the entire command staff on a single vulnerable ship? What happens if that ship goes down? But it's mostly minor stuff.

There were a couple things that I was going to complain about, but changed my mind as the novel progressed. I found the comic relief that seeps into this otherwise very dark novel whenever the magician or the witches show up, initially somewhat off-putting. But upon reflection, I realized that Rosen was playing off the long tradition of the trickster figure, and in the end I came to quite enjoy Tarius' bewilderment at their silly byplay. Similarly, I initially disliked the cover art, but it has grown on me somewhat as I have come to realize that artist John Kaufman's depiction is precisely accurate in meticulous detail. What you see is indeed what you get.

Which only leaves one substantive issue with the book: I reject the right-wing subtext that genocide is ever a morally defensible strategy. This is just too dangerous a position to ever condone, especially within the current political context of the Bush Administration's War on Terror. I am a bit disappointed that an otherwise radical work should reveal itself to be so conservative at its core, but this is unlikely to disturb many American readers, or pretty much anyone into sword and sorcery. So morally reprehensible stance aside, Sword Masters is recommended to fans of the genre.

Reprinted from NeoOpsis Magazine #14

[Sherwood Smith]

a sword and sorcery adventure story with her signature humor, crisp pacing, and stylish character gender bending. Tarius is really a girl, not a boy, but joins the Jarthik academy in order to be trained to fight the Amalites, who just go around killing to be killing. Don't assume it's a standard "britches" story, because it isn't—I'm not far in, and already there are all kinds of surprises, the characters are interesting and complex, the world intruiguing. And Rosen, who is an accomplished swordswoman in real life, writers with nifty detail about just what the life would be like. Her book is published by a small press, and I hope people will give it a try. These days especially, small presses deserve all the word of mouth we can give them.

[Wulfae · Rating 1 out of 5]

I would give this negative stars if I could. Four negative stars. This book is terrible.

[Kendall Noelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Stiff dialogue, but I could have forgiven that and rated this higher if not for the relationship built on lies, and nonconsensual sex.