Shadows of Aggar

Amazons of Aggar #1

by Chris Anne Wolfe

Diana n'Athena is an Amazon working for the Terran empire on the medieval planet of Aggar. Her mission is to rescue a downed pilot / spy from Aggar's wilds. But when the Council demands she be bonded to a Shadow in order to be allowed to make the journey, things get interesting. Shadows are exceptional guides and fighters, but Elana is something more -- she has the gift of the Blue Sight. As the two women race against time to prevent an all-out intergalactic war, they become erotically entangled, complicating both their lives and putting their mission in danger. Author- approved edition. Book One of the Aggar Trilogy .

Genres: Fantasy, Lesbian, LGBT, Science Fiction, Queer, Romance, Lesbian Romance

252 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Chris Anne Wolfe grew up in rural N.Y. where they counted cows instead of people for voting districts. She weathered a few cultural shocks to the “real” world and then finally settled in L.A.’s “not-so-real” world with a PH.D. in clinical psychology.
Before her untimely death from cancer in July, 1997, Chris Anne Wolfe had published four novels, romantic fantasies Roses and Thorns and Annabel & I, and Amazon adventure stories Shadows of Aggar and Fires of Aggar. The story of Beauty and the Beast was always a favorite of hers and she was quite proud to see her unique and moving interpretation of the story in print. She had many friends world-wide and is missed by all.

Reviews

[Lex Kent · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was better than I imagined. A sweeping fantasy with sci-fi elements and romance. In a way it reminded me of When Women Were Warriors The Warrior's Path, though not as beautiful. I was surprised how much the romance played a part of the story. Sometimes a romance can be swept under the rug in a fantasy book with a good amount of world building. This was not the case, and for that I am thankful.
This was not the easiest book to read, having to learn new terms, people and places. However it was much easier to grasp than say Daughter of Mystery was in the beginning. You soon found yourself immersed in the world of Aggar.
While there was excitement in the characters journeying, sword fighting and danger, what really moved me was the bond and romance the two mains shared. It was very well written and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
It deeply saddens me to know Chris Ann Wolfe is no longer with us. I am glad however, to see these book republished including a new title that came out this year. I would absolutely recommend this to fantasy/sci-fi fans especially if you enjoy a love story with your adventure.

[nemo ☠️]

(dnf at 10%)

i've been trying to get into this for weeks but we just ain't clicking :( not rating because a) i didn't get very far and b) it was good, my brain just wasn't in the mood

[Book Worm · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book. This is a drawing it inspired.

[Gail Carriger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Funnily enough, this fantasy sci-fi felt like a version of an early (read good, but dated) Sharon Green novel, only LBGT centered. It came on my radar recently (via SF Signal, I think) as an excellent example of 19803-1990s lesbian sci-fi fantasy (of the Darkover style so popular during this time period). I'm glad it did, because I enjoyed it. The romance is colored by willful miscommunication (somewhat culturally based, making it a bit more forgivable than Sharon Green's examples of this type). I ended up wanting to shake the characters and tell them just to sit down and have an actual conversation with each other, for goodness sake. However I forgave this book because the plot was interesting, the world building very fun, and I like the mix of various genres. It reminded me a little of Anne Maxwell and also of Moore's Hero series. This is the first of two books in an unfinished four book series (Wolfe died in 1997). Because I'm afraid of cliff hangers and I felt that this book ended well, I will not be reading the second (and last) book.

[Jenna · Rating 5 out of 5]

The world-building here is exceptional. The societies, cultures, philosophies, political systems and magical abilities are all thoroughly developed and combine to paint a very clear picture of a place my imagination has never before visited. The world has its share of darkness, but Ms. Wolfe still manages to fill it with optimism, hope and beauty.

The relationship between Diana and Elana is, for the most part, wonderful to follow. They have undeniable chemistry, and the slow evolution of friendship and love between them was lovely. My only criticism comes from a misunderstanding between the two that could have been (and should have been on any of a hundred occasions) solved with a single brief conversation, but instead became the primary issue hanging over the heads of both characters for 250 pages. Frustrating.

Still, that's a pretty small gripe in what was otherwise an absolutely incredible book. I wish there were more lesbian sci-fi and fantasy novels of this quality, but that has sadly not been my experience. Strongly recommended.

[Dani · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love the Amazons of Aggar series. It saddens me beyond words that Wolfe is gone, but I love that her story and series continues on even after her death. Shadows of Aggar is probably my favorite of the series, although I do dearly love them all.
Diana and Elana’s budding romance and relationship is beautiful. I wanted them together from the beginning and my heart ached at the end when they are separated. Thank the goddess Diana came back for Elana. The world building is amazing. I love Elana. She is both a Shadow and Blue Sighted. I feel for the stigma surrounding the blue sighted. Diana is an Amazon. I long to know more of her home and sisters, and I soak up every bit of information Diana provides of them like a sponge.
I am spell bound by the mission and the dangers facing Diana and Elana throughout. The book totally captures my attention, even after reading it a dozen times.

[Betty · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 *

This was a surprise read. I did not have high expectations of this book but it turned out to be a gripping fantasy. Great world building, good characters and a great story that drew me in right from the start. It is very reminiscent of Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover novels, and if you like any of those, you will also enjoy this.

I would recommend this one to any lover of swords and sorcery type fantasy (and that would be me). So on to book two...

[Officialwhich · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't know why, but there is something about this (the weird pacing? the romance? the flying cats? limited character development of anyone other than the protags? how much more time is spent on characters walking around than any actual plot movement?) that feels vaguely fanfiction-y and dated.

[XR · Rating 2 out of 5]

This took a lot of effort to get through and I'm not sure if I'll start on the second book. I did like Elana's character and I liked how she was linked into things so personally. I'm not one to not finish what I started and knowing what happens between Di and Elana was the only reason why I was able to finish the book.

[Eva Reddy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most authors struggle to create a convincing set for their characters to play upon. Chris Anne Wolfe managed to develop entire worlds and do a grippingly convincing job of it. I am in awe, humbled by this; my most favourite book to date.

[Dide · Rating 4 out of 5]

My appreciation wasn't immediate but as I grew more accustomed to the characters and plot I grew immersed. Read about the demise of the author... I am so glad she left such a legacy. Look forward to reading more of her legacies

[charlotte, · Rating 2 out of 5]

Rep: lesbian mcs

[R · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great characters, in an interesting world with a Sci-Fi, Fantasy feel to it, it had a good balance of action and romance between Diana and Elana.
There's also the interesting underlying story between the four entities involved, You have The Amazons, who are ostensibly working for the Terran Empire, on planet Aggar and dealing with the Council of Aggar who guide the development their society, and finally theres the Ramains King who with the capture of a Terran pilot and ship intends to shift the balance of power his own way with the help of the pilot and the advanced technology from his ship.

This is how things get started Elana who has magical ability as a representative of the council is joined to Diana n'Athena the Amazon representing the Terran Empire, Joined in a ritual performed by the council, the two are sent of to rescue the pilot and bring him back, it's along this journey that Diana and Elana become increasingly attracted to each other.
I would actually give 4.5 Stars, I actually listened to it on Audiobook from Audible, it was a great listen in total it was 20 hours long but it really seemed to go faster.
I'm looking forward to getting the second & third in the series which are also available on audible, the forth has not been released yet but I believe it is due for release.

[Camerin Poulson · Rating 1 out of 5]

Could not finish this book. I really tried. Got over halfway through with the hope that it would get better but I can't go on. The writing is so strange and stilted that it is difficult to understand what is happening and the motivations of the most of the characters.
After reading half the book I still don't understand why this random dude from another planet is such a threat to everyone. Mostly this book is just a series of situations created to have the two main protagonists hang out and endlessly explore their feelings for each other.
I wanted to like them, but the Amazon (Diana) came across as an angry nut job for a large part of the book and Elana seems desperately in love with her for no apparent reason except that some lady stuck a stone in her arm which forces her to "bond" with Diana. It was never clear to me why this bonding thing had to happen or what Elana and the rest of the people that raised her get out of this process but I am no longer willing to read any more to try to figure it out.

[Delta · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the world building and character building of the story, but I had a hard time with the combination of fantasy and sci fi. We get "aliens" that can use space travel, but still use bows and arrows. We have lasers, but still use swords. It was a bit disjointed and confusing. But I loved the relationship between Diana and Elana. I didn't feel like the relationship was a checkbox for a lesbian couple; it felt like the build up you might find in any straight romance, which is the best way to handle it.

[Frank Van Meer · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really struggled with this. The blend between fantasy and sci-fi didn't really work for me and around the 50% mark it started to get tedious. I only finished it because I wanted to know what Elana would be doing in the end.

[Rain · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars. Too much romance, not enough adventure.

[Charlotte Lambert · Rating 5 out of 5]

A truly amazing and inspirational book. Beautifully written with fantastic characters and a great mix of fantasy and sci-fi.

[Amy Jesionowski · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the story. The writing was decent and I felt Wolfe did a good job with the world building.

[Ariel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful book. Written with delightful detail. I love the essence of the story. Great to read about healthy lesbian relationships that are inspiring to me. The world of Aggar is awesome.

[Apollonia · Rating 3 out of 5]

had problems getting into it but was worth sticking it through

[Vanillabean · Rating 2 out of 5]

dnf at over 50%
Just kept getting bored

[A Shrimp · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF - onto the pile

I can't do it. The writing is just so weird. For a story so generic and uninspired, the language is pretentious as all hell. You're not writing poetry... there is abstraction, and then there is whatever Shadows of Aggar is.

It reads like somebody thesaurized the ever living hell out of their writing. Everything takes forever because the author can't stop over describing everything in a very distracting flowery but often times nonsensical flood of words. It sounds nice on the surface, but most of the flowery language just doesn't convey any information at all, and often times makes literally no sense.

Some examples:

"[...] Diana made out a stillness that must be the old mistress." - how can you "make out" a stillness?

"it was perhaps not the time to be careless with distractions" - coming out of nowhere. I suppose the sentence sounds nice, but there was never a distraction to be careless about in the first place.

"She felt panic rise and then fade again. This stirring, shivering touch was so much like making love [...]" - why exactly does this produce panic?

"[...] Perhaps it is my alien biology. [...] There was little difference, physiologically between them" - do I need to explain why this makes no sense?

"[...] the image of the woman's safety, of soft and caring places danced through Elana's mind." - what does the image of a person's "safety" look like? I don't get it.

"[...] she released the last of her fears, letting her body respond to the inevitable." - what IS the inevitable? I genuinely don't know.

"[...] the duller whites asserted their prowess, smothering their colors imperiously." "[...] it seemed innocuously opaque then, and rather small." - I think I know what those sentences mean, but holy hell is it a thesaurized unreadable mess.

"Diana's detachment rippled" - I don't even... how does a person's "detachment" "ripple"? WHAT DOES IT MEAN!?

If you really try to understand what each sentence is supposed to mean (beyond attempting to build a flow of nice sounding words) the experience feels more like an effort to translate a foreign language than enjoyable reading.

The author wastes so much language on irrelevant stuff, such as wasting multiple sentences on describing how a character empties liquid from a container into a protagonists hand - TWICE. And then the author spends an inordinate amount of time describing in painstaking detail how the characters rub oil over each other.

I can't take the romance seriously either. One of the main characters saw her love interest in her dreams (yawn), which is apparently why she is in love with her. When they first touch, they - of course - feel a magical jolt of electricity (yawn again.) Because what other way is there to convey that two people are attracted to each other in romance...

The amazonian warrior is self sufficient and strong. This is conveyed through her constantly thinking back on all the women she's banged. A lot of the time - out of nowhere - she is suddenly reminded of having sex with an unknown amount of women. It didn't make her seem strong to me, it just made her seem really weird. I got it after the first time, you can stop bringing it up now. At this point, it's just absolute cringe. She literally smells "the scent of women" while being rubbed down with oil by her love interest. It's so weird.

The plot is... a mystery to me. Why again exactly do the two main characters need to engage in a magical, bare breasted bonding ritual (involving rubbing oil on each other's breasts and implanting a magical stone in a person) that will result in the death of one of them? I mean I get it: it was the author's way of getting the characters together. But why exactly is it necessary within the world? That little tidbit isn't explained, it's just accepted as a thing that needs to happen.

The entire thing is even weirder because at one point, the amazonian was supposed to choose a "shadow mate" out of multiple of them. This was then suddenly completely dropped so the two main characters can get busy performing a weirdly sexual bonding ritual.

The amazonian warrior is totally okay with some breast rubbing magic ritual. But then she suddenly
"[...] felt a sudden rush of fury in her blood" because somebody asks her to wear a blindfold. I'm so confused...

The rest of the plot is equally as thin. Beneath the author's weird, stilted thesaurized language, very little information is really conveyed to the reader. Most of it is empty, flowery, pretentious nonsense.

I don't get why this has good reviews. I am so confused how anybody manages to get through this without going insane.

[✩☽ · Rating 2 out of 5]

There was so much left in the universe of the patriarchal ways that her Sisters had struggled to leave behind… Terrans who could not grasp the need to question, let alone the necessity to reject those ancient paths.

this took me forever to get through, mostly because the pacing is terrible: it's 90% romance and 10% plot.

though when i say 90% romance, that's somewhat misleading, because the romance is 50% Waxing Eloquent about each other's Divine Beauty and Inner Strength and 50% Random Miscommunications based on Wild Assumptions (followed by therapy-speak style reconciliation and gay sex).

for a book that is overwhelmingly focused on the romance, it doesn't do much to build up the relationship between the two female leads. elana, who is from a society where, and i quote "even wh*res do not know what a woman loving a woman is" (??????) is instantly dtf diana because of the power of Dream Magic and Soulmate Bonding Stone. i'm not a fan of the "i chose you" preceding "i know anything about you" - miss ma'am, what exactly are you choosing here when you have zero information about this woman and also you are both attached to a magic stone that will kill you if you leave her?

there's a lot of cross-cultural issues between diana and elana as their relationship develops but i found them more irksome than anything because every dilemma follows the same general pattern: diana makes some assumptions about elana and gets angry/distant, elana reads her aura and freaks out, they eventually talk, diana apologizes and monologues to herself about how Elana is Strong and Different, rinse and repeat three chapters later.

the worldbuilding though is an interesting depiction of what a female separatist society might look like in the context of a broader patriachal world, tracing diana's early attempts to navigate patriarchal society and her frustrations with the docility of the women in these societies, wanting to "save" them but simultaneously realizing it's not her place. probably the high point of the book for me, coupled with diana's easy camaraderie with her fellow amazon sister, cleis. wolfe's writing style is certainly inventive in its descriptiveness, though a hit-or-miss; evocative at times and grating at others.

on the whole though, there's not enough of interest to recommend really. bonus points for the sentient flying cat though.

[Miss KittyKat · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.2 stars. From the first couple pages I knew this book would be hard to put down. Imaginative and creative world building with a metal poor medieval culture still using horses and swords made of tough ceramics in contact with an advanced culture that travels the stars. The fantasy parts of Shadows and their powers added to the story. The way Diana and Elana life-bonded was unique and clever. Flying cats added to my enjoyment of this tale. I do like slow burn romance but this one dragged out too long imo. Diana didn't discuss her culture and planet being female only and treated Elana like she was a child for too long. The artwork in this added nothing and imo didn't portray the characters. An example is that the artwork when the two life bonded had Diana and Elana the same height when Diana is over six feet and Elana is petite. To be fair this was done after the author's death. I'm not a fan of anime. The traveling parts and sword fights added to the story. Diana knows how to use swords and Elana is an archer. I don't know if the next books in the series are ones I will read as from the blurbs they take place centuries after Diana and Elana and some are not written by the author. I read this author's book Rose and Thorn and enjoyed it.

[Vervada · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the second book written by Chris Anne Wolfe that I've read and my appreciation for her skill continues to grow, especially since these books were originally published in the 90s. The main characters and their evolving relationship were the best part in my opinion; I loved how Elana and Diana could be so similar in some ways and so completely different in others and how that complicated their interactions. The way the two move from suspicion and miscommunication to loyalty, trust and partnership was beautifully written. And Elana's Blue Sight was so interesting and cool! I'm hoping that it'll be described even more in the sequels. The world was intriguing; a mix of science fiction and epic fantasy that I've seen done only rarely, but which is one of my favourites.

Overall, a gorgeous debut that convinced me to buy all three sequels as soon as I finished it.

[Kathleen Carlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book for the first time sitting outside at a share in The Pines on Fire Island about 25 years ago. I did not have much light but I was not leaving the table until I finished this book. I’ve since read at least 30 times, if not more. I’ve read the book so often I almost have it memorized!!

Why do I like it so much, what makes it a desert island book? Great world building, intrigue, believable family given and chosen, powerful female characters, humor, and a kind of beat the odds love story.

Unfortunately, Chris Anne Wolfe died very young, with only a few published titles, not too many years after Swords was published. For me, she left a story that I can visit time and again with joy and wonder.

[Cornelia · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book reads a lot like mediocre fanfiction. The setting could have been interesting, but the focus is constantly on the dynamic between the two main characters and the plot comes across as an unfortunate necessity while they angst about their feelings for one another.

[Ernest Crowder · Rating 2 out of 5]

Plot to thin and characters to uninteresting for story to be able to justify its length.

[Jessica · Rating 2 out of 5]

DNF half way through. It was so slow and too much fluff.