Dive straight into the epic journey of ROXANNE, a captivating high fantasy novel that places you inside a complex world filled with dark magic and intrigue. In this gripping novel, you live the extraordinary life of Roxanne, a young girl flung into relentless misery and despair. She slowly grows into a powerful Cleric of Hades who seeks to dominate the prosperous realm she grew up in. She embodies evil.
As The Grand Matriarch of Hades, Roxanne is the diametric opposite of Genoivieve's status as The Grand Matriarch of Aphrodite. Genoivieve represents resilience and honor, demonstrating a unique goodness that inspires. Roxanne is the mythical opposition, but nothing like any common villain or typical trope. Because her life has ordinary roots just like anyone, we learn to understand and appreciate her actions. We see her deal with and develop prodigious inner demons, and young Roxy soon discovers that her destiny under Hades is intricately linked to the world. While embracing evil, she walks along traditional themes of hard work, diligence, leadership, resourcefulness, excellence and integrity. She is a leader who surprises the world with her explosive popularity and growth.
Roxanne manages to inspire a number of important characters, particularly Ulmaetor, his twin brother Ulrich, and the two step sisters who begin as Roxanne's spiritual acolytes. All four installments to the GENOIVIEVE series definitely make a case for an increased female readership in a genre that has historically been male-oriented.
With expertly-crafted world building and a compelling, first-person narrative, Roxanne is a mesmerizing tale accented with allegory and literary nuance. She is Volume 4 of the Genoivieve Series, overlaps well with Volume 2 Ulmaetor, but functions well as a stand-alone story. As always, no AI support was employed in the written word or of any hand-drawn maps. Only character images were AI enhanced from personal photographs. The story provides a genuine mosaic of classical lore, ideal for fans of high fantasy, contemporary fantasy and sword & sorcery role-playing alike, and represents a fine read, both within and outside of the genre.
