When my friend Kathy handed me this book as something to amuse myself while she was on the phone long-distance I was immediatly sucked in and had to take it home with me to finish. The combination of historical fact with creative writing gave me the feeling that I was right there with American Woman through her many adventures and I was loathe to say goodbye at the end of the novel. In my opinion the fantasy does work and I didn't balk at the transition into the spirit world. I particularly enjoyed Coyote and his shifty nature. I would recommend this book to anyone with an interest in Native Americans or someone just looking for a good read. American Woman always moved along at a good clip and didn't get bogged down, a rarity in historical fiction.

I thought that this novel was well written. I am not usually taken in by spiritual or magical worlds that often appear in novels, sometimes out of nowhere. However, I feel that Robertson did an extremely good job in painting a vivid portrait of how this magic "medicine" and spirituality surrounded and weaved through the culture of the Native Americans. Robertson's eye for detail and precision is very apparent; I felt that he explained details of battles and battle discussions in a concise manner. I felt that since Native Americans were very respectful of animals and their importance in the chain of life, it was extremely important for Robertson to incorporate that into his novel along with the principles of Quakerism, as told by Sarah Kilory.

American Woman is a double edged historical novel of dual cultures' experiences filtered through a gritty perspective of irony and wit. Set at the time of the battle of the Little Big Horn, told by a blonde, Quaker second wife to a Shyenna warrior named Yellow Leg, American Woman weaves the fabric of myth and history simultaneously. Humour, acerbic wit, and slanting perspectives lead to unforeseen levels of involvement. Humanity is both reduced and elevated. Sarah, the witch who does not know she is a "bruja" has vivid and relentless visions. Lakota and Shyenna customs presented are well researched by the author. One of my favorite chapters deals with the naming ceremony for Nothing, Sara's sister-wife Raven's daughter. Raven invites Sara to the ceremony, which is for women only.

"We stood our daughter up, so everyone would know what a fine child she was. Firelight danced in her dark eyes. It was a grave moment. She was about to lose her baby name forever and get the one she would carry into womanhood. Shyenna women did not collect and discard names like a Lakota brave. Many carried their adult name throughout their lives.

Raven recited Nothing's story....And what a story it was. Once I would have dismissed it as extravagant superstition - but if any of these women disbelieved it, they were polite enough to sit on their doubts. I stared at the little girl, thinking about that first day in the Center of the World when I had been enraged at her bare existence. Now I wanted to hug her. But it would have been disrespectful - too Wasichu. This was her moment, not mine...Raven announced, 'She shall be named for the mother who cared for her when she was sick, who cradled her when I could not, and who called for the Southern Herd to save her. From now on my daughter will be American Woman.'

I was as stunned as anyone. You could have heard a feather fall in the lodge.

Raven continued in her flat, cool way, 'Her mother does not need that name. She has the one given to her in the Spirit World. She is E-hyoph'sta, Light Haired Woman.' It was the first time any Lakota Eater had called me that. That triumph alone would have choked me - but it was trivial compared to seeing a little black-eyed girl standing straight in her white deerskin, beaming because she bore my cast-off name.

I pulled my blanket up over my face and cried. Through the tears and blanket I could hear women approving. It was wonderful, strange, and awesome. When I recovered, we ate until the lodge was littered with gnawed bones (pp. 312-313)."

Vivid and heartrending, American Woman tells a tale of blood by mixing bloods and perspectives. A new truth emerges, washed with the broken refractions of human tears.

Nancy Lorraine, Reviewer

Robertson should be castigated for only one thing, the sequel he promises in his afterword has never eventuated.

I was in here looking for more books by the author because I loved this books so much. Somehow he struck the right balance in an ever shifting world our heroine travels through, and still making it all balance and ring 'true'. I was glued to the book until I came to the end. One of the things I love, character development, was handled extremely well. Though the ending came 'full circle' and fit in perfectly, i was still mystified and wishing to take another journey to gather more data in. Alas, there is no sequel. I mourn.

Eric Robbins from Booklist states in his review of 'The Moon Maid and Other Fantastic Adventures' that "Barsoom is the name of the lunar realm in Edgar Rice Burroughs' moon tales." As Barsoom relates to Burroughs' Mars tales and has nothing relevance to another famous ERB novel ('The Moon Maid'), one should perhaps be skeptical as to the accuracy of Robbins' review of this title.

R. Garcia y Robertson is an historian, and the benefits of his particular training shine through in his stories. Most obviously, he loves to write historical fantasies, as with his novel The Spiral Dance (set on the Scottish-English border in the 15th Century), or with several stories in the collection at hand, set in a wide range of historical milieus. He also likes time-travel storiesas with "Gypsy Trade" included here.

The title story is one of the most "Fantastic" of the historical stories included. "The Moon Maid" is an Amazon, one of an historical group of women warriors, located near the Don (or Amazon) River in what is now Russia. Her "tribe" honors lions, and when a nomad Hetman's son is killed by a lion, she must capture and destroy the animal, or risk having her whole tribe exterminated by the nomads. Her tracking of the lion is a mixture of realistic animal tracking, and rather wildly fantastic events, such as a meeting with Hercules, described in hilarious detail.

The place of women in historical societies is a recurring theme in these stories (and strong women characters occur in almost all the stories, including the futuristic ones). "The Other Magpie" features real historical figures at the Battle of Little Big Horn. The title character is a very independent Crow woman, mourning her brother's death at the hands of the Sioux. Partly as a result, she and her friend end up joining Custer's army. The Magpie and her friend are historical characters, though the specifics of the Magpie's dealings with her dead brother, and of her attempts to save Captain Reno from the coming disaster, are a bit more speculative. "Four Kings and an Ace", perhaps the best story here, features Boy Toy, a young Chinese girl, a Christian and the adopted daughter of missionaries, abandoned on the docks in San Francisco after her parents' deaths. She falls into the hands of a gang which tries to sell her into slavery, but is fortunate to encounter a clever lawyer, who sees a way to use her beauty in a battle against a crooked railroad man. The story climaxes with a suspenseful poker game, and a predictable ending which still surprises, in the best way.

Robertson is also a first-rate writer of science fiction adventure. "Cast on a Distant Shore", one of his earliest stories, is set on an ocean world, where economically marginalized humans live on floating islands and earn subsistence money by diving for seastones. This setup is rather old hat, and the plot is a bit familiar as well, involving a diver in desperate straits who agrees to help an alien scientist fish for a particularly dangerous sea animal, but the story is very engagingly told, with a nice twist or two, and the main characters are interesting people. "Gone to Glory" is also set on an alien planet, this one in the middle of terraformation. The dirty work of preparing the new planet for human colonization is being done by "retrobred" Neanderthals, and the daughter of a highly-placed human has been lost, apparently captured or killed by a tribe of escaped Neanderthals. The story is very exciting, with a colorful balloon flight across the half-terraformed planet, and a serious, believable, ecological motivation behind things.

The other stories are also fine. The most compelling feature of these stories is that they are just that: stories. Indeed, as the title of this collection reads, "Fantastic Adventures". Rife with color, full of action and romance, every story included is pure fun to read. (And Robertson has a real knack of knowing when a story ends.) Indeed, if I had a gripe, it might be that serious thematic concerns are left in the dust as the action races by. (Though it should be noted, even as his protagonists strive and (usually) succeed, the background details are often darker: slavery in late-19th Century San Francisco, ecological disaster on an alien planet, the sometimes bloody history of Christianity, are all displayed here.)

Despite the cheezy cover, this collection of eight sci-fi/fantasy short stories are all fairly interesting, if not overwhelming. Robertson has a nice touch for detail, and many of the stories incorporate or are based upon actual events or places in history. The lead story "Gypsy Story" was optioned by a major movie studio, and it's instantly apparent why, as it concerns time-traveling gypsies captured by Nazis in WWII and other interesting adventures. "Four Kings and an Ace" is a rather weak story set in 19th-century San Francisco. "Cast On A Distant" shore is solid alien tale with a nice reversal at the end, somewhat similar in some ways to the more straightforward entertainment of "Werewolves on Luna." Perhaps the two most solid tales are "The Moon Maid" which has a Central-Asianish Amazon meet Hercules, and "The Wagon God's Wife" which is a retelling of an old Scandinavian tale. Both "Gone to Glory" and "The Other Magpie" are perhaps a little heavy-handed and less effective at entertaining the reader. Even so, this is a collection worth browsing through at the very least.

A fan of both D Gabaldon and the Yorkist kings, I picked up this book with great enthusiasm, only to be disappointed. While the fictional aspect of time travel, witchcraft, and adventure are creative, the author leaves reality totally behind when dealing with the history of this period. Edward IV (Robyn's romantic interest throughout the book) was a shrewd, charming, ladies man who never seemed to exhibit the kind of romantic loyalty described in the fictional character of the book. If the author had chosen a different person in history, he might have been more credible. But so much is known of Edward, that I simply could not buy into the author's changes of his character. With Edward's brother, Richard III, already maligned by the Tudor revisionists, I hesitate to read any sequels to this book. My hope is that he will either focus more on the fiction or align the story more with history. (If Robyn is meant to be the lady love who Edward married and then died alone in a convent after he threw her aside, the sequel will be short indeed...unless Robyn goes to another time in history.) Of note, I did enjoy the characterization of Jacquetta Woodville (Edward's future mother in law) as a witch, certainly in keeping with historical accounts.

I throughly enjoyed this book! It is good historical fiction with adventure and romance, but not all the gushy romance that is found in most Romance Novels. Even though the author is a man he seemed to capture a woman's view of romance. The use of magic to explain the heroine, Robyn's time travel actually adds to the plot making it more interesting. After reading this book I started reading history books on Edward and the War of the Roses. For those who like a little history, subtle word-smithing and just the right amount of romance, this is the book for you!

First of all, let me state that this is NOT some... gushy romance with no plot except lover's problems that no one cares about. This is an adventure story, about a woman named Robyn transported back in time. Her friends (and enemies, sometimes) are reincarnations of people she has known from her life in the present. I got this book out from the library, suspicious it would be a fluff book like most romances are, and imediately went out and bought it once I finished it. Robyn travels back and forth, from the medival ages to the present, several times. She travels all over the place, including to a much smaller Londen, and gets to meet imporent historic people. Read this book! ^_^