International Authors’ Day Bloghop #IntAuthorsDay

If you haven’t heard about International Author’s Day, it’s a day started up by Debdatta at b00k r3vi3ws to celebrate authors and show our appreciation for all the work they put into books by writing about favourites, or how we got into reading/why you love reading… Whatever!

Anne McCaffrey has been my favourite author for a good long time. I jumped from the multitude of horse novels into the Dragonriders of Pern series and devoured it like one would popcorn: always looking for more to feed the craving even when the tub’s empty.

(For the record… yes, I have a thing for popcorn, too. No butter, thanks.)

Sadly, my newspaper delivering money never quite matched up with my ravenous reading habit and the libraries never seemed to stock more than a few copies.

(Although, I’m ever so pleased to see that’s changed.)

So, one day, I was strolling along the shelves, looking for something that would fit my desire for… Well, back then, I didn’t know about the phrase Science Fantasy or that they would become the stories I adore the most. All I knew was that this story of scientifically created dragons that were used to combat these deadly alien creatures called Thread seemed created just for me.

(By this stage, I’d devoured multiple series by David Eddings, K. A. Applegate, Maurice Gee… I could go on. Sometimes, reading them two and three times.)

Anyway, there I was, searching along the shelves for my next obsession. Enter Andre Norton with the Witch World Saga…

OMG! I recall my little teenage mind almost exploding with joy at finding this novel. What book?

Gryphon’s Eyrie

 

I read it so many times, not even knowing it was technically the third in a sort of trilogy within the whole series, it mentioned past events, but in a way that let me enjoy the story it was telling now.

It follows Kerovan, who is set apart from other men by way of being born with amber cat-like eyes and cloven hooves, he considered it as a curse of being marked as having kinship with the Old Ones, I considered it as awesome. I still do. Come on… Hooves! Think of the fortune you’d save on shoes!

And there was his wife, Joisan, who was one hell of a character. Despite being less powerful than her hubby, she was better at facing down her enemies, probably due to being the one who saw her power as a tool and actually used it. She got pregnant in this one, too, and still kicked major butt. My kind of woman, really.

In short, it was everything I’d been searching for.

I tried so hard to find the other novels, to find out the whole story, but it’s only been recently that I was able to complete the trilogy. I’m still working on owning the entire Witch World Saga (just a handful left now).