CHOOSERS OF THE SLAIN
by Ann Chamberlin
Fiction: Historical Fantasy Mythology
Throughout the recited and recorded
history of mankind in all cultures, a few women have gone to great lengths to
rise above their inherent positions of obscurity. Often they have reached a
position of recognition only through great sacrifice. Common history chooses to
discount the efforts and contributions of these amazing women, but this more
thorough telling strives to give due credit, even in the fantasy realm of
fiction. This series, The Valkyries,
is dedicated to the goal of telling the woman’s side of history and life,
predicated on the determination that not all myth and lore is reserved to
celebrate men alone.
The
Valkyries tells the
story of one such woman. As a young girl, Brynhild of the Peoples of the North,
the tribe of the Angles, is doomed to die in the Spring Thaw ritual. However,
she manages to skirt death, only to be marked as warriormaiden destined to ride
with Odin. How she comes into her own as she suffers the trials and tribulations
of the life thrust upon her is only part of the story. Throughout her life, she
wrestles with questions that plague her. As a female, is it possible to claim
glory and freedom only at the expense of denying one’s womanhood? And the
freedom from womanhood – is it truly freedom or some sham construct, a cruel
trick played by the gods?
Perhaps there are no answers, only the
life she chooses to live, despite the glower of the god who chose her, One-Eye,
Aesir of the Sky. Perhaps her destiny truly is what she has always tried to avoid
– embracing the Vanir of the Earth and her role in the Wheel of Life.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Ann
Chamberlin believes that the purpose of storytelling – as of all true art as
well as all true religion – is to support positions in exact opposition to the
views prevailing in a culture’s powerhouses, whatever those views happen to be.
Nowhere is this more crucial than in the retelling of history. As Milan Kundera
tells us, people in the powerhouses are not so interested in who will control
the future as in who controls the airbrushes in the labs where the past’s
photos are retouched.
Born
and raised in Salt Lake City, Ann Chamberlin also spent big blocks of time as a
child in Europe where her father was visiting professor of mathematics. After
flitting from school to school and major to major including theater, history,
and English, she finally majored in Archaeology of the Middle East at the
University of Utah. She spent a summer in Israel excavating the biblical city
of Be’er Sheva, traveling throughout the Holy Land and living in the old city
of Jerusalem for a month. She reads Hebrew, Arabic, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and
ancient Akkadian, as well as French and German. She has traveled across all of
North Africa, Turkey, Syria, and Jordan. She has two sons and twelve chickens,
and lives in an old farm house on nearly two acres near Salt Lake City.
Ann
is the author of fourteen historical novels, several of them named best foreign
historical of the year by Romantic Times.
Ann is pleased to announce a nonfiction history of women in the Middle East, through
Haworth Press. She is the author of many plays which have been produced across
the country from Seattle to New York. To find out more about Ann and her books,
please visit her web site at
Look for THE VALKYRIES BOOK 1: CHOOSERS OF THE SLAIN at popular online retailers like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords, in both ebook and print!
