The Ly-San-Ter Books
Click the links to buy any of the books in this series.
- The Ly-San-Ter Futuristics (Johanna Lindsey)
- Warrior’s Woman
(1990)
- Keeper of the Heart
(1993)
- Heart of a Warrior
(2001)
- Warrior’s Woman
Warrior’s Woman
Tedra and Challen
Book #1
I can’t even begin to describe how much I adore this book. I was a teen when I bought it at my local grocery store. The cover alone was enough to entice me. (See the image on this page. Isn’t it cute?)
The premise is simple. Tedra comes to a planet looking for barbarians who can fight other barbarians who have taken over her homeworld. She finds them. But they’re barbarians, of the sort that that don’t like the clothes she wears or her forward ways. Challen, barbarian extraordinaire, immediately orders her to remove her warrior’s clothes, even if that means she’s got to stand around naked. Tedra refuses. She challenges him to a fight, loses (partly her own doing because she doesn’t actually want to hurt him), and ends up as Challen’s bedroom slave for a month.
The book is too cute to describe accurately. There’s no great science here, and reality is on a planet far far away from Challen’s homeworld, but I have never cared. The characters are so compelling and the storyline so charming that I wouldn’t change a thing.
Keeper of the Heart
Book #2
Tedra’s and Challen’s daughter Shanelle is all grown up and she isn’t that keen to take on life as a warrior’s woman. Although she has plans to escape life with a warrior (if escape becomes necessary), Challen has other ideas for his daughter after it becomes clear that she’s gotten a little too friendly with a visiting warrior.
Although this story in no way compares to Warrior’s Woman for quality and excitement and just plain fun, Keeper of the Heart is a really good book. There’s some spacefaring excitement in this one, and also some fun scenes when Shanelle gets caught in the middle of a gender war.
Heart of a Warrior
Book #3
It’s hard to say how much of a disappointment this particular book was. I expected great things of Dalden’s story–I didn’t expect to find myself reading about Earth and a woman who is so resistant to the idea that life exists out in the universe that she imagines she’s trapped in some kind of habitat with a delusional hero. There was so much potential for this book, and I honestly feel that almost all of it was squandered. Too much description of past events, too little tension between Brittany and Dalden.
However, I am thinking about rereading the book, which I’ve never done, so maybe there was something there that I missed the first time. I’m ever hopeful.