Thunderstone

by Shawna Walls

Young Mirya Thunderstone, like all Dwarf women, has lived her entire life inside her people's mountain home. Frustrated by her confinement, she longs to take up her family's legendary axe, and follow in the footsteps of her late, war-hero brother. But when an accident strands her outside the mountain, she finds there's more to being a hero than wielding a weapon.

Joined by a playful otterkin couple, a deadly Elf warrior, a laid-back Native hunter and an outcast orc, Mirya must use both her axe and her wits to find the truth behind the war that claimed her brother's life.

252 pages, Paperback

First published January 8, 2013

About the author

Shawna Walls (b. 1971) has done a little bit of everything related to media and entertainment. Trained as a journalist, classical singer and actor, Shawna additionally dabbles in photography, video editing, Web design, and print graphics. Also, according to her friends, Shawna's a pretty darn good cook and full of enough useless information to rival Wikipedia.

Shawna is a proud geek and nerd (and knows the difference between the two) and enjoys being a fan of others' work as much as creating original works. Other hobbies include travel, birding, and fierce tooth-gnashing about politics and social justice.

Shawna lives in the Pacific Northwest with husband Mike, son Terran, and two incorrigible cats, Otter and Khaleesi.

Reviews

[Alison C · Rating 3 out of 5]

Necessary caveat to begin: I know Shawna Walls, author of Thunderstone, slightly, from social media site Live Journal, insofar as she is one of my LJ friends. Indeed, for that reason I wasn't sure if I should write a review here or not, but then I decided it wouldn't be fair to her to not review it. So: Young Mirya Thunderstone is a dwarf female who doesn't fit in well with the dwarf custom of keeping women and girls at home in the mountain where they tend children, sew, cook and do other domestic chores; Mirya wants to get out of the mountain to see the world, but she's not allowed. One day, while on the way home from performing a family errand in a town some distance away in the mountain, she manages to accidentally tumble out into the world from a window on which she was perched, enjoying the view. And the cursing of a creature who'd been caught in some brambles below; and that's how she meets Feist and Two, otterkin partners, and her adventures begin. The dwarves have been fighting a long war with the Mulaq, a stern elk-like race, which makes Mirya's homeward path much more perilous than it at first seems, but along the way she meets other companions, and other races. She begins to learn things about these different peoples, and begins to see that getting home is only the start of things for her.... The book is pretty much a YA fantasy, perhaps for children a little younger, and I enjoyed the journey that Mirya takes and the people she meets; I found it a little simplistic in its motivations (most everybody she meets is a good person, wanting to do the Right Thing), and of course it's fairly derivative of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis especially, but then it's hard not to be derivative of them when writing fantasy! But I liked the diversity of characters (though Elizabeth A. Lynn, in her brilliant Chronicles of Tornor trilogy from the late 1970s, had many gay characters and characters of colour, etc., so while it's still a bit unusual, it's not groundbreaking to have such individuals in fantasy work), and I thought it all worked out quite nicely altogether. Given that this is a first novel, I should also note that there are a number of sentences and passages that just sing, and the author is to be commended and encouraged to write more, I think! Available at amazon as a kindle download or in print form; recommended.

[Catherine · Rating 5 out of 5]

A refreshing book and highly entertaining. Couldn't put it down and devoured it in one afternoon!