Cold Blood

by Katherine M Lawrence

Overview

A samurai destined for greatness embarks on her first mission.

In ancient Japan -- a land of stunning beauty and unspeakable brutality, in a time when gods walked among mortals -- Yamabuki, a warlord's only daughter, trained in sword and bow, bears important dispatches to the Imperial Capital.

Veiled in the guise of an ordinary warrior, not even revealing that she is female, she travels not as a princess but with the common people, only to find that many are not who they seem. Some want her dead. Others want her because she's a woman. She must fight for her honor, her duty, and her clan. Blood will be spilled before it is over.

The epic saga of Yamabuki's adventures in the years leading up to the Genpei War and beyond begins here in Book One of Sword of the Taka Samurai.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940157125370
Publisher:	Toot Sweet Ink
Publication date:	08/25/2016
Series:	Sword of the Taka Samurai , #1
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	132
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

For several years, Katherine M. Lawrence has been researching and writing the adventures of Yamabuki, an actual historic female samurai who lived in the Heian Era of Japan. Inspired by several decades in the martial arts halls led by women: as a martial arts student in residence for four years at the Ja Shin Do Academy both in Boston, Massachusetts, and Santa Fe, New Mexico; the San Jose State University Kendo Club; and Pai Lum White Lotus Fist-Crane in Albany, New York, style Katherine set out to write about the experiences of women who train in warriors skills...and Yamabuki in particular.

Katherine graduated from the University of Washington with a BA degree in both History and Chemistry, and continued with work on a Masters in History at the Far Eastern and Slavic Institute. She also graduated with an MBA from Harvard. For several years she provided consulting services for the Japanese firm, Kaneka, helping them with their marketing efforts in the United States.

In her undergraduate and masters degree work she developed an appreciation for the different mentalities and mind-sets of people in other eras and other cultures--for the assumptions of 21st century Americans are very different from late 19th century Europeans, let along people of other cultures in by-gone eras.

Editorial Reviews

Cold Blood not only shows you the beginning of Yamabuki's story as a teenage Samurai, also contrasts her life to that of the woman she would have been had she not opted to tread the warrior's path. That draws out one of the best elements of historical fiction which is when it educated as well as entertains.... You don't write an excellent story by accident.

I highly recommend Cold Blood.

Heroines of Fantasy - Carlyle Clark

Yamabuki is ... immersed in a world of characters she doesn't yet have the experience to judge.... She has an idea of what it means to be ready to kill if she has to...but it seems to be more an aspect of her training than a reality for her.... Yamabuki's journey in Cold Blood covers that very long distance, another passage for her.

Goodreads - Anne Vonhoff