From Publishers Weekly
Powerful and poignant, but hopefully not prophetic, Charnas's sequel to Walk to the End of the World and Motherlines presents an action-packed, if upsetting, dystopia in which men have used women as chattel and have even contemplated raising them for food. The story continues the adventures of heroine Alldera, who leads the Free Fems, freed female slaves, against their former masters. As she returns from the Grasslands with a small army of Free Fems, Alldera's soldiers are now on horseback. Using superior bows, they retake the lands of their former bondage, joined in their victories by newly liberated slaves and by the Riding Women, nomadic females who have no biological need for men because they use horse sperm as a catalyst for their own reproduction. The women's taste of victory in battle leaves them nearly as bloodthirsty as their former masters, and Alldera's leadership is always in jeopardy, in part because she decides to protect the master who freed her long ago; the latter and a eunuch, Setteo the seer, are the only "good" males here. Hugo and Nebula award winner Charnas's story is not for the weak of stomach. For as Alldera asks, "Who can make a new, whole self without spending the ocean of old poisons first?" That spending is here vicious, bloody and wrenching. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Alldera the Runner, with her army of Free Fems, embarks on the realization of her lifelong dream: the liberation of the enslaved women of Holdfast, her former home. In this follow-up to Walk to the End of the World (1974) and Motherlines (1978), Charnas explores the politics of retribution as the former slaves becomes masters with the power to dispense either mercy or revenge. The strong feminist theme that permeates this powerfully written saga creates a disturbing and thought-provoking atmosphere that may not appeal to everyone.Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Although this postapocalyptic, feminist tale is the third in a series Charnas began 20 years ago with Walk to the End of the World (1974) and continued with Motherlines (1978), it stands on its own. The basic scenario echoes Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale (1986): Women are slaves and breeders. But in Charnas' novel, a group of slaves have escaped Holdfast and found freedom out in the Grasslands, the home of the Riding Women. These women warriors manage somehow to conceive human daughters from intercourse with horses. The ex-slaves, or Free Fems, find this as ridiculous as this reviewer does, so, biological clocks ticking madly, they decide to return to their homeland as conquerors, liberate their sisters, and force their male prisoners to mate with them. The ensuing grim and bloody action takes place in a blasted future that is positively medieval. Conflicts quickly arise within the ranks of the women's army, all traceable to the suppression of healthy and caring interaction between the sexes. By depicting a world in which homosexuality is the only accepted form of intimacy, Charnas throws our own confusion about gender roles, sex and procreation, and same-sex love into high relief, while also considering the implications of revenge, retribution, justice, and forgiveness. The Furies has its moments. Donna Seaman


From Kirkus Reviews
This third novel in Charnas's acclaimed feminist science fiction series comes many years after the second (Motherlines, 1978), but it's well worth the wait. In a world nearly destroyed by ecological catastrophe, the women (``fems'') of the Holdfast are abject slaves kept only for labor and breeding. Alldera, who escaped to the matriarchal Riding Women of the Grasslands, leads a band of other refugee fems back to take the Holdfast from its male masters. Internecine strife has meanwhile done most of their work- -very few men remain in a few ghost towns--but the Free Fems soon find their worst enemy is dissension among themselves. Charnas's clear thinking and exposition avoid most of the pitfalls that a nakedly political and allegorical book like this risks; her fems are complex, varied, and flawed human beings, and her depiction of the gender wars is perceptive and intelligent. A moving, thoughtful feminist novel set in a gritty and believable dystopian future. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.


Book Description
In Book One of the Holdfast Chronicles, Aldera the Messenger, along with all other women, is a slave. In Book Two, Aldera the Runner lives in two worlds, both consisting entirely of women. Now In Book Three, The Furies, Aldera the Conqueror leads an army back over the mountains, hoping to end the tyranny and free the salves she left behind.



About the Author
Suzy McKee Charnas is the author of over a dozen works of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, including the Holdfast series from Tor Books and the Sorcery Hall series of books for young adults. She is the winner of the Hugo Award (for her short story "Boobs") and has won the James Tiptree, Jr. Award twice, once retrospectively for the first two Holdfast books and then for The Conqueror's Child, final volume of the Holdfast series. Her most recent book is My Father's Ghost, a narrative nonfiction work about her father's old age. She adapted her novel, The Vampire Tapestry, for the stage in the late 1990s.

She was born and brought up in New York City, the setting for the Sorcery Hall books, and she currently lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

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