Alex the Fey by Claudia Christian

I've always loved James Bond. I freely admit as a feminist that this is one of the most shameful confessions I could possibly make. Insert all of your Bond Girl complaints here; I cannot deny them. But... even before I developed a huge crush on the Double-0 7 who manoeuvred around Dr. No, I loved the excitement, adventure and, yes, even the gadgets of James Bond's world. I didn't want to be a Bond Girl, good or bad; I wanted to be James Bond. Okay, maybe Jane Bond, but you get the idea. Unfortunately, the closest I got to that in the late 70s/early 80s was "Charlies Angels". Please- they didn't have an Aston Martin or veddy cool British accents.

It might be because I didn't see myself or a person I could grow up to be reflected back at me that, in general, I'm not into thrillers in books or on screen. (Although I will still see most of the Bond releases when they come out.) When I want to interact with world events, it's usually through non-fiction. I love policy, history... I even like economic history. (And politics is my favorite contact sport.)

But I still get that itch for an adventure sometimes, and I have no idea when the next Bond film is coming out. So when I found the "Alex the Fey" series by Claudia Hall Christian, I was intrigued. The main character is a brilliant and nurturing Special Forces spy whose specialty is rescuing hostages in the direst of situations. She inspires the kind of loyalty that follows even after death. She's also the only survivor of an attack that killed everyone else on her team. With each book, she's getting closer to figuring out who was behind the attack and why, but clearly something is locked inside of her memory that she doesn't want to let out. What is she afraid of?

I've read "The Fey" and "Learning to Stand" so far. Christian has done an impressive job creating and keeping track of a large universe of characters, most of whom have some role in politics or the military. And if you like romance, there's quite a bit of that too- Alex is also married to a hot doctor... who just happens to have a British accent. *sigh*

Christian isn't a spy who moves in political circles (I think), but she's pretty cool too. She's had those varied life experiences people used to think were assets for a writer, but more importantly, she can't stand Rush Limbaugh and Kobe Bryant. What's not to love?

Historical Fantasy in Dark Age Wales

Sarah Woodbury has put her own spin on the Arthurian legends with a number of novels. In "Cold My Heart", the main characters are the knight Myrddin (I still swoon a little over that name) and a former nun named Nell. Arthur, of course, is there too, but one might almost call him a secondary character.

I don't write fantasy, but I've loved the Arthurian legends since my mother took me to see Richard Harris in "Camelot" for my 8th birthday. The "Crystal Cave" series and "The Mists of Avalon" remain among my favorite books of all time.

I quickly fell in love with the resourceful heroine and realistic hero of "Cold My Heart", and Woodbury did a very good job of fleshing out the murky motivations and shifting alliances of everyone in her universe. Even Mordred isn't pure evil- although he comes pretty close. But the center of the story, in my opinion, was the question of whether people who could glimpse the future could use their knowledge to change it.

In this post, Woodbury discusses how she, a historian, used her research about the period to construct a world that might have existed.