Angieville

Today, I'm hanging out over at Fantasy Cafe for the second annual Women in SF&F Month. Kristen has put together another stellar lineup of authors and bloggers in this month dedicated to the women throughout history and today who have contributed so much to my two all-time favorite genres. This year, I was inspired to write about one of the very first female SF&F authors I ever read. Her impact in my life has been enormous. Stop by and say hi . And while you're there, be sure to weigh in on the Favorite SF&F Books by Women Project with your top ten favorites!

R etro Friday   is a weekly meme hosted here at  Angieville  and focuses on reviewing books from the past. This can be an old favorite, an under-the-radar book you think deserves more attention, something woefully out of print, etc. When I was in sixth grade I had a teacher who was a real fantasy reader. And the man could do the most excellent voices for every character. We sat enthralled at his feet as he read aloud to the entire class each day. No mean feat to keep a mess of eleven and twelve year olds' attention like that day after day. He's a huge part of the reason I love the genre and he is responsible for introducing me to so many of my all-time favorites, including (and perhaps most memorably) the incomparable Lloyd Alexander and Susan Cooper .  Not long after we, as a class, inhaled Cooper's The Dark is Rising sequence , I struck out on my own looking for anything else I could find by the woman. A kind school librarian handed me a copy of Seaw...

Seeing as how I've already written Retro Friday reviews of both my favorite Robin Hood retellings , it was really only a matter of time before I started in on my favorite Arthurian novels. Somehow the two have always gone together in my head--Robin Hood and King Arthur--the best of the best when it came to British mythology and lore. Truth be told, I've been mildly obsessed with both ever since I was a girl and I have a soft spot in my heart for the first encounter I had with each in novelized form. As far as Robin Hood goes, that was Robin McKinley 's The Outlaws of Sherwood . With Arthurian lore, it was Susan Cooper 's The Dark is Rising Sequence . The sequence is actually a five-book series following two groups of people embroiled in the centuries-old conflict between the Light and the Dark. The first group are the three Drew children--Simon, Jane, and Barney--who become involved through their connections with their mysterious Great-Uncle Merry. The second is a lon...