The Slave and The Free

Books 1 and 2 of 'The Holdfast Chronicles': 'Walk to the End of the World' and 'Motherlines'

Holdfast Chronicles

Suzy McKee Charnas

Tor Books

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After thirty years, Suzy McKee Charnas has completed her incomparable epic tale of men and women, slavery and freedom, power and human frailty.

It started with Walk to the End of the World, where Alldera the Messenger is a slave among the Fems, in thrall to men whose own power is waning.

In continued with Motherlines, where Alldera the Runner is a fugitive among the Riding Women, who live a tribal life of horse-thieving and storytelling, killing the few men who approach their boundaries.

The books that finish Alldera's story, The Furies and The Conqueror's Child, are now available. Once you start here, you won't want to stop until you've read the last word of the last book.

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MOTHERLINES
PROLOGUE1Alldera crouched tensely by the river, staring at tracks in the soft mud. The water was shallow here, and something had crossed to the far side; no, two things - two strings of tracks separated and came together again.She had not seen a living being in the months since her escape from her homeland, nor had she expected to - other than perhaps the monsters with which legend peopled the wild country, but she had not really believed in them. She looked fearfully back over her shoulder.

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Praise for The Slave and The Free

"One of the best book I've read this year." --Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina

"Only one science fiction book in hundreds manages to convince the reader that it ever could have happened anywhere, and at least that few are worth reading at all....[Charnas has] created a future that is at once believable and fascinating." --William S. Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch

"[Motherlines is] a pioneer exercise in women's fantasies of independence, skill, freedom. It has a robust, earthy beauty. She has a genius for grasping ideas and dreams that are in the air and making them concrete and dramatic in her fiction." --Marge Piercy, author of Gone to Soldiers and Woman on the Edge of Time
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About the Author

Suzy McKee Charnas

Suzy McKee Charnas is the author of over a dozen works of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, including the Holdfast series from Tor Books and the Sorcery Hall series of books for young adults. She is the winner of the Hugo Award (for her short story "Boobs") and has won the James Tiptree, Jr. Award twice, once retrospectively for the first two Holdfast books and then for The Conqueror's Child, final volume of the Holdfast series. Her most recent book is My Father's Ghost, a narrative nonfiction work about her father's old age. She adapted her novel, The Vampire Tapestry, for the stage in the late 1990s.

She was born and brought up in New York City, the setting for the Sorcery Hall books, and she currently lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Suzy McKee Charnas

Suzy McKee Charnas

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Available Formats and Book Details

The Slave and The Free
Books 1 and 2 of 'The Holdfast Chronicles': 'Walk to the End of the World' and 'Motherlines'
Suzy McKee Charnas

Trade Paperback

Trade Paperback
Tom Doherty Associates
Tor Books
June 1999
Trade Paperback
ISBN: 9780312869120
ISBN10: 0312869126
5 1/2 x 8 1/4 inches, 448 pages
$21.99
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