''Dossouye'' is a
sword and sorcery
Sword and sorcery (S&S) is a subgenre of fantasy characterized by sword-wielding heroes engaged in exciting and violent adventures. Elements of romance, magic, and the supernatural are also often present. Unlike works of high fantasy, the tale ...
novel by American writer
Charles R. Saunders
Charles Robert Saunders (July 12, 1946May 2020) was an African-American author and journalist, a pioneer of the "sword and soul" literary genre with his Imaro novels.Tattrie, Jon.The extraordinary inner world of Charles R. Saunders, father of ...
, and published independently in 2008 by Sword & Soul Media via the online press
Lulu. In 2012, Saunders published a sequel ''Dossouye: The Dancers of Mulukau''.
Background
''Dossouye'' is a
fix-up novel created of the short stories "Agbewe's Sword", "Gimmile's Songs", "Shiminege’s Mask", "Marwe’s Forest", and "Obenga’s Drum", the last previously unpublished. Dossouye herself is a woman warrior inspired by the
real-life female warriors of the West African
Kingdom of Dahomey
The Kingdom of Dahomey () was a West African kingdom located within present-day Benin that existed from approximately 1600 until 1904. Dahomey developed on the Abomey Plateau amongst the Fon people in the early 17th century and became a region ...
. Her first stories appeared in
Jessica Amanda Salmonson's ''
Amazons!
''Amazons!'' is an anthology of fantasy stories, edited by Jessica Amanda Salmonson, with a cover and frontispiece by Michael Whelan. It was first published in paperback by DAW Books in December 1979, and was the first significant fantasy anthol ...
''
and
Marion Zimmer Bradley's ''
Sword and Sorceress
The ''Sword and Sorceress'' series is a series of fantasy anthologies originally edited by American writer Marion Zimmer Bradley, and originally published by DAW Books. As she explained in the foreword to the first volume, she created the anthol ...
'', two anthologies designed to increase the number and recognition of female heroes in sword and sorcery fiction. Agbewe's Sword was adapted by Saunders himself in the screenplay of the film
''Amazons'' (1986).
Mistaken Indetidy
/ref>
Synopsis
Orphaned at a young age, Dossouye becomes a soldier in the women’s army of the kingdom of Abomey. In a war against the rival kingdom of Abanti, Dossouye saves her people from certain destruction; but a cruel twist of fate compels her to go into exile.
Mounted on her mighty war-bull, Gbo, Dossouye enters the vast rainforest beyond the borders of her homeland, seeking a place to call her own.
The forest is where Dossouye will either find a new purpose in life... or find her life cut short by the many menaces she encounters.
Setting
An alternate Africa like continent which goes unnamed throughout the novel
List of characters
The characters in this section are listed in their order of appearance.
*Dossouye – a former member of the women's army of Abomey who goes into self-imposed exile to protect the beliefs of her people
*Gimmile – a song teller cursed by Legba who Dossouye encounters
*Marwe – a shapechanger, a spirit of the forest that Dossouye encounters
Footnotes
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dossouye
2008 American novels
American fantasy novels
Novels by Charles R. Saunders