Black Shield Maiden

December 1, 2023

Singer/songwriter Smith and cowriter Hendel launch an epic trilogy set during the age of the Vikings and featuring fierce African warrior Yafeu, who is taken from her home in the Ghanaian Empire and brought north. There she decides to become a shield maiden and fight for freedom. Prepub Alert.

Copyright 2023 Library Journal

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 4, 2024
Singer-actor Smith and screenwriter Hendel debut with a sweeping historical fantasy epic combining African and Nordic lore. In Ghana, heroine Yafeu, named for her now absent father and taught by him—as a boy would have been—that “belief is power,” accepts her tutelary spirit, a painted wolf, just before her village is razed and she’s abducted by slavers. After a horrendous desert journey, she’s rescued by a ferocious female Viking and brought as a slave to a pagan Norse village where she despairs of ever achieving the great destiny her mother predicted for her. Eventually she becomes a servant to Freydis, the local king’s daughter. As the women grow close and share their African and Norse heritages, they see in the blend of their two cultures a path to overthrowing their barbaric male-dominated society. Though ambitiously loaded with snippets of Scandinavian and African history and mythology shaped to the authors’ feminist orientation, the story does not quite convince. Little anachronisms (a warrior dressed in plate armor rather than ring mail) will throw off the historically minded, while cartoonish male villains weaken the empowerment plot. Still, fans of Norse fantasy frustrated with the genre’s overwhelming whiteness will appreciate this refreshing take on the milieu.

March 1, 2024
Smith's debut, written with Jess Hendel, is a sprawling historical epic spanning continents and cultures. Yafeu is a headstrong young woman from the empire Wagadu who loves working at the forge and hunting. Her father has left their family to explore and she anxiously awaits his return. Captured by slavers, Yafeu is saved by a female warrior named Alvtir, who takes her across the ocean to Skiringssal. Everything about Yafeu's new home--the cold, the language, the people--is unfamiliar. When Princess Freydis, a young woman with her own royal ambitions, takes Yafeu as a slave, the two women realize they have plenty in common. Together they hope to rise above their stations and achieve their personal freedom. The authors researched what life was like in the Ghana Empire and medieval Norway to accurately portray our heroines' lives. Yafeu and Freydis have a unique voice and perspective, and readers will enjoy learning about their cultures. The many fight scenes are exciting and balance well with the moments of exploration and mythology. Recommended for fans of underrepresented fantasy settings, like the works of Nnedi Okorafor or R. F. Kuang. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Smith is a big name in pop culture, and there's a lot of buzz surrounding her debut fantasy novel.

COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

May 24, 2024

DEBUT Young Yafeu, enslaved when her desert village is raided, follows the woman warrior who saved her onto a dragon ship headed for the Norse fjords. Yafeu hopes to become a warrior like her savior but instead seems fated for life as a thrall far from home. Her life changes again when she is sent to guard a princess whose destiny becomes entwined with her own and the woman Viking who guides and mentors them both onto a path leading to regicide, revolution, and powerful allies in the fight to prevent Ragnarok and preserve a new way of life. Yafeu's journey, like that of Ejii Ugabe in Nnedi Okorafor's Shadow Speaker, is the story of a young woman who must step out of the narrow space defined for the women of her homeland and go far beyond the horizon to fulfill a big destiny, although Yafeu's journey of coming of age and into power is set far back in history during the Viking era. VERDICT This debut from singer/songwriter/activist Smith and screenwriter Hendel is recommended for readers of alternate and fantasy history in which women seize power and hold it in spite of the forces arrayed against them.--Marlene Harris

Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.