HAVE YOU OVERLOOKED – Gail Dayton?

This author hasn’t written a huge list of books. What she has written, which is why she is on my ‘Overlooked’ list, is a terrific trilogy; The Compass Rose in 2005, The Barbed Rose in 2006, and The Eternal Rose in 2007. These are often classified as romance, but I find them much more inclined to the fantasy side, (take the fantasy out, and no book, take the romance out, and you still have a good book) and certainly very readable by someone like me who dislikes the usual slush and gush of a standard romance. Most of her other published books are genuine romances, but this trio was excellent in the creation of the world of the One Rose books and they are now sitting on my ‘permanent’ shelves as I expect to re-read them a number of times before I die – unless that’s sooner than I expect….

Listen, this trilogy is seriously good. I bought the first as ‘light-damaged’ and half-price, liked the characters so much that I went out and bought the other two full-price and find that I’m not the only one who thought they were very well written. Book two won the 2007 Prism Award for Best Fantasy, then The Eternal Rose won the same award the year after. That says something. There’s almost no personal information about the author to be found except on her One Rose trilogy where she notes that she’s recently moved to Galveston and says that she began writing early in her life. Never mind, read the books and that’ll tell you most of what you want to know – that she writes a darn good fantasy. I note that she is now a couple of books into a new trilogy/series described as steampunk fantasy for all you steampunk enthusiasts out there and that should be worth a second look. I’m not a huge steampunk fan although now and again I have written steampunk stories for fun, (one is in Steampunk Trails 1, September 2013) but if the new books are as good as the One Rose trilogy, then just as soon as I can afford them I’ll be buying.

Note on that last: the author tells me that “The steampunk books are more romance than the others…I think there would still be a story without the romance, but a lot of the magic rests on that foundation…” so they still sound interesting to me.

 

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