BLACK SHIELD MAIDEN

From Willow Smith and Jess Hendel comes a powerful and groundbreaking historical epic about an African warrior in the world of the Vikings Lore legend and history tell us of the Vikings warrior kings on epic journeys of conquest and plunder But the stories we know are not the only stories to tell There is another story one that has been lost to the mists of time the saga of the dark queen That saga begins with Yafeu a defiant yet fiercely compassionate young warrior who is stolen from her home in the flourishing Ghanaian empire and taken as a slave to a distant kingdom in the North There she is thrust into a strange cold world of savage shield maidens tyrannical rulers and mysterious gods And there she also finds something unexpected a kindred spirit She comes to serve Freydis a shy princess who couldn t be more different than the confident and self possessed Yafeu But they both want the same thing to forge their own fate Yafeu inspires Freydis to dream of a future greater than the one that the king and queen have forced upon her And with the princess at her side Yafeu learns to navigate this new world and grows increasingly determined to become one of the legendary shield maidens For Yafeu may have lost her home but she still knows who she is