Only three stones of power remain, and only the eight descendants of Zubin can wield them. Mairi, Trogen, and two of their cousins have the last four.
A ruthless and power-hungry man is intent on stealing the stones, murdering the three leaders of the fleet, and torturing the secrets of navigation from the next generation.
Grand master Astreya gives Mairi command of a ship with instructions to keep the younger members of his family far from danger.
Mairi must face political turmoil ashore, resolve conflicts with her twin brother Trogen, and lead her young crew through storms, dangerous passages, and battles at sea before she can discover the mysterious river of stones.
River of Stones begins 20 years after the end of The Astreya Trilogy. Mairi and Trogen, the twin daughter and son of Astreya and Lindey are 18, and have risen up the ranks to second mate.
Autorentext
I was born in England in 1941, during an air raid. My father was a British naval officer, my mother a singer from New Zealand. In 1949, we immigrated to Canada. After acquiring degrees in English literature, I taught at Canadian universities and then worked as a writer/editor for government and industry. I retired in 2003, and shortly after completed The Astreya Trilogy which I had begun many years earlier. All three volumes were published by Fireship Press, Tucson, Arizona in 2011. Next I wrote The Laughing Princess, a collection of 12 interrelated stories that concern dragons. It is beautifully illustrated by Ottawa artist, Shirley MacKenzie, and first published under the imprint Colophon in 2016. Back in the 60s, I was a little too old to be a hippie, but I visited folk who lived on the North Mountain of Nova Scotia in those years, and have kept in touch with some of them. For them (but not about them) I wrote The Hippies Who Meant It, published under the imprint Colophon in 2016. In 2020 I returned to the world of The Astreya Trilogy to write River of Stones, a stand alone story which takes place 20 years after the conclusion of the Trilogy. Then as a lockdown project during the Covid pandemic, I wrote Angel's Share, a novella set in the same world, chronologically a century before the Trilogy. It is a stand alone story that is also an introduction to all five books. It was published under the imprint Colophon in 2020. Ellie continued the saga three years after the close of River of Stones. It was first published in 2021.