Warrior Women

I am eagerly awaiting the arrival of a new research book: The Encyclopedia of Amazons: Women Warriors from Antiquity to the Modern Era. The title alone captivated me. Here, I thought, is a great research book for strong female protagonists who have a propensity for violence (aka Areia).

I love that the fact that there are so many women warriors throughout history that in the book blurb on Amazon, the Library Journal says of the author:

Salmonson defines the term "amazon" through Greek mythology and includes only those women who actually participate in direct combat. She excludes from the encyclopedia women who were spies, assassins, famous murderesses or criminals, orators, or hunters.

Of course, now I want the author to do a follow-up book on women who were spies and assassins, etc.

I came across the book through sheer coincidence while surfing the Internet. One interesting page had led to another until I ended up on someone's blog page and they were talking about how great this book was. Even better, when I told Cody how I thought I should buy the book (which for those who don't know me and my ingrained compulsion toward delayed gratification, that meant that I should hunt through the local used book store for months on the off chance they'd have it in stock before maybe purchasing the book), and Cody said I should just buy it. Right then. So I did!

(See what I mean about wanting to do research on the book I'm not technically working on? I'll let you know if I like it.)