The Valiant
Lesley Livingston
Razorbill, 2017
Hard cover, 372 pages
Trigger Warnings: Violence, Slavery, and Language
About the author: Lesley Livingston is from Toronto, Canada. She is the author of multiple award-winning series such as Wondrous Strange and her middle grade series The Wiggins Weird. She has a master’s degree in English from the University of Toronto. The second book from The Valiant series was published earlier this year and the third will be published in February 2019.
“We were castoffs and slaves, orphans and unwanteds, and used-to-be princesses. We were infamia… But we were a sisterhood. ‘Uri, vinciri, verberari, ferroque necari.’ And we were mighty.”
Fallon is the daughter of a king, the sister of a warrior, and the enemy of Julius Caesar. On the night before her seventeenth birthday, she is captured by slave traders and arrives in Rome. She is sold to an elite training school for gladiatrix’s and must overcome the deadly battles in and out of the arenas. She will discover secrets that could threaten her life as she knows it and only time will tell if she can find people she can trust.
Livingston shows the power of what courage can really do when someone listens to their intuition and acts upon their emotions. She has created a willful, intelligent, strong young woman who not only discovers her independence, but also protects the ones that she loves. The innocence and youth of Livingston’s characters are sure to be relatable for new and old readers alike. The Valiant is great for historical fiction lovers and Roman history fanatics.
PRR Writer, Allisone Doerner
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