A few years ago, Shauna Roberts, a fine writer herself, told me that she
had enjoyed the Talera trilogy but was hoping sometime to see a true warrior
woman show up in the series. For those of you who have read it, you know that
Rannon is a powerful warrior herself but we’ve almost never seen her in action,
and her role as Queen of Nyshphal does make it a little hard for her to go
leaping about freely with a sword.
Shauna’s comment hung around in the back of my mind and eventually
coalesced into a warrior named Shai in Wraith of Talera Here’s how she was introduced: “A shape leaped through the new sphere
gate. A man. No, a woman. She wore an armor of bones, carried a rapier in
either hand.”
Shai becomes an ally of Ruenn Maclang and stands with him in the final
climactic battle of Wraith. I think it’s one of the best battle scenes I’ve
written in the series. I won’t tell you whether Shai survives. You’ll have to
read to see.
