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Holdfast Chronicles
Series · 4 books · 1974-1999

Books in series

Walk to the End of the World book cover
#1

Walk to the End of the World

1974

The men of the Holdfast had long treated with contempt the degenerated creatures known as "fems." To give themselves the drive to survive and reconquer the world, the men needed a common enemy. Superstitious belief had ascribed to the fems the guilt for the terrible Wasting that had destroyed the world. They were the ideal scapegoat. The truth was lost in death and decay and buried in history. It was going to be a long journey back...
Motherlines book cover
#2

Motherlines

1978

Alldera had risked her life to escape the Holdfast, where men ruled fems in a bestial society based on fear. She had followed a whisper: the legend of the free fems who lived without masters. Instead, she had found the Motherline Tribes. The proud Riding Women who bred without men, the dark-laughing warriors who dared her to be free!
The Furies book cover
#3

The Furies

1994

The Fems were slaves of the men in the Holdfast. When Alldera escaped her slavery, she led a band of rebels to build a world where women rule. In Book One of the Holdfast Chronicles, Walk to the End of the World, Aldera the Messenger, along with all other women, is a slave. In Book Two, Motherlines, Aldera the Runner lives in two worlds, both consisting entirely of women. Now In Book Three, The Furies, Aldera the Conqueror leads an army back over the mountains, hoping to end the tyranny and free the salves she left behind.
The Conqueror's Child book cover
#4

The Conqueror's Child

1999

25 years after the landmark publication of Walk to the End of the World, Suzy McKee Charnas has completed her epic tale of the Holdfast. The Fems were slaves of the men in the Holdfast. When Alldera escaped her slavery, she led a band of rebels to build a world where women rule. Now Sorrel, Alldera's daughter, joins her mother. She brings with her a young boy she has adopted. The Conqueror's Child completes an epic history of life and love and the war between men and women which will stand for generations to come. Winner of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award

Author

Suzy McKee Charnas
Suzy McKee Charnas
Author · 15 books

Suzy McKee Charnas, a native New Yorker raised and educated in Manhattan, surfaced as an author with WALK TO THE END OF THE WORLD (1974), a no-punches-pulled feminist SF novel and Campbell award finalist. The three further books that sprang from WALK (comprising a futurist, feminist epic about how people make history and create myth) closed in 1999 with THE CONQUEROR’S CHILD, a Tiptree winner (as is the series in its entirety). Meanwhile, she taught for two years in Nigeria with the Peace Corps, married, and moved to New Mexico, where she has lived, taught, and written fiction and non-fiction for forty five years. She teaches SF from time to time, and travels every year to genre conventions around the country and (occasionally) around the world. Her varied SF and fantasy works have also won the Hugo award, the Nebula award, the Gigamesh Award (Spain), and the Mythopoeic award for Young-Adult fantasy. A play based on her novel THE VAMPIRE TAPESTRY has been staged on both coasts. STAGESTRUCK VAMPIRES (Tachyon Books) collects her best short fiction, plus essays on writing feminist SF and on seeing her play script first become a professionally staged drama in San Francisco. Currently, she’s working at getting all of her work out in e-book, audio, and other formats, and moving several decades’ worth of manuscripts, correspondence, etc. out of a slightly leaky garage and sent off to be archived at the University of Oregon Special Collections. She has two cats and a gentleman boarder (also a cat), good friends and colleagues, ideas for new work, and travel plans for the future.

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