The Light of the Light by Donna Gillespie

Book 2 - The Lady of the Light

See snippets of reviews from Amazon.com and other goodies below:

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Publisher's Weekly

Gillespie (The Light Bearer) continues the adventures of her larger-than-life Germanic heroine, Auriane. In the first installment, Auriane, the daughter of a great "hero-chief" of her native Chattian tribe, was captured by the Romans and trained as a gladiator before being rescued by Marcus Arrius Julianus.

Now, seven years later, Auriane and Marcus live in the frontier province of Germania Superior on a sprawling estate with their daughters, Avenahar and Arria Juliana. The idyllic interlude is interrupted when the Chattians, who are being threatened by another Germanic tribe, the Cheruscans, look to Auriane for their salvation.

Torn between her people and her family, Auriane rejects pleas to return to personally lead the Chattian resistance, and instead steals from her husband to secretly fund the Chattians' defense efforts. When her activities are discovered, Auriane is tried for treason and sentenced to death. Compounding her troubles, Avenahar runs away and joins the Chattian resistance, an unknown assassin stalks Marcus and a political rival kidnaps Arria Juliana. This is historical fiction for adrenaline junkies: the pace is furious, the action ferocious and the suspense unrelenting.....

Kirkus Reviews

The sequel to Gillespie's elaborate Roman epic featuring proud warrior Auriane (The Light Bearer, 1994) finds the now middle-aged woman on the verge of retirement while comfortably ensconced in her lover Marcus Julianus's estate with two daughters. It is a.d. 105, and Emperor Trajan rules over an uneasy conglomerate of nations in the Roman Empire. At the imperial border of Germany, where the ancient rivers Mosella and Rhenus meet, the Chattian chieftain's daughter Auriane has lived in romantic accord for seven years with Marcus Julianus, the revered, aristocratic Roman official and father of her nine-year-old daughter, Arria. Secretly, however, Auriane has been involved in a dangerous smuggling operation for her ragtag guerrilla tribe, the Chattians, and is torn between her love for Marcus and her desire to help her people in their ongoing insurrection against Rome. And her fearless, hot-headed 13-year-old daughter, Avenahar - whose father, a Roman slave, Auriane was involved with during a time she'd rather forget - is determined to become a warrior like her mother. When her father's fighting companion Witgern, leader of the Chattian Wolf Coats, seeks out Auriane to help them, Auriane refuses out of love for Marcus and her children, yet she is forced to flee anyway (with Avenahar quick at her side) once the Romans find out she is the fugitive smuggler.

Gillespie is an engaging, credible narrator of these far-flung events, and delights especially in the details of Avenahar's womanhood ceremony, enacted deep in the ancestral Holy Wood in the presence of numerous elderwomen and sorceresses. When Avenahar bolts at the news of who her father really is, Auriane sets off to find her and with Marcus's help enlists the might of the Roman army, although our feminist warrior is fed up with this senseless violence and vows to spend her last years as a seer.

Gillespie provides yet another invincible female heroine in Auriane's daughter Avenahar - look for her apotheosis in the next installment.

Fresh Fiction

....Secretly supplying her people with money to buy arms, Auriane risks not only her own life but that of her husband and daughters should her treachery be discovered. As fate would have it, Auriane's secret is uncovered and exploited by the pettiest of tyrants. With the safety of her people tipped on one side of the scale and her family's lives held in the balance on the other, Auriane searches her soul and bravely makes her choices.

Gillespie has a real sense of time and place. All the cruelty, passion and treachery that we expect from Rome and her people come alive in LADY OF THE LIGHT, the long- awaited sequel to THE LIGHT BEARER. This is an expertly paced page-turner from one of history's most exciting chapters.

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