Frostflower and Thorn

The hot-tempered, impulsive swordswoman Thorn has gotten pregnant. The gentle, celibate sorceress Frostflower wants a child, and can bring a baby from conception to birth in an afternoon. Though the pacifistic sorcerers are feared and hated outside their mysterious mountain retreats, Frostflower persuades the suspicious warrior to let her magick the baby to term. But when the sorceress's actions arouse the wrath of the ruling priests, Frostflower and Thorn find themselves outlaws under a death sentence.

Wildside Press is performing a great service by reprinting obscure or hard-to-find works of fantasy, science fiction, and adventure from authors like H. Rider Haggard, Rudyard Kipling, and Sax Rohmer. But Wildside may be performing an even greater service by reprinting the equally deserving works of less famous authors. One writer receiving a well-deserved revival is Phyllis Ann Karr. As of 2000, Wildside had reprinted four of her fantasy novels: Frostflower and Thorn, Frostflower and Windbourne, At Amberleaf Fair, and The Idylls of the Queen. The heroic-fantasy Frostflower and Thorn series is well written, complex, and thoughtful, and never descends to cliché. You will find no simple villainies here, no quests for some superpowered sword or amulet. This is no standard high-fantasy realm of kings and knights and dark lords, and its culture is very different from ours, so much so that certain events and behaviors in Frostflower and Thorn will deeply disturb some readers, although they are believable consequences of this world's societies. --Cynthia Ward