I have read many science fiction fantasy novels over the years and how I define my favorite book is by how many times I have reread it which leads to how well worn the book cover has become. The Sholan Alliance Series by Lisanne Norman has reach that criteria many times over.
When I first read the novel it was a strange concept to write about a human woman falling in love with a non-human male but she makes it seem acceptable. Lisanne Norman has created a world without stereotype stigmas but one that the reader can relate with all it’s differences and commonality.
Lisanne Norman was born in Glasgow Scotland and was trained as a teacher. She professes that her main interests lie in the science fields of paleontology, cultural anthropology in ancient Egypt and Minoan civilizations. She studied the history of the Old Testament culture in college. Her vast interests have surfaced in her writing of the Sholan world.
Reading used to be a favorite pass time for her with consuming 8 books a week, now with a more hectic schedule she doesn’t read as much and she doesn’t want to be influenced by those stories when writing. Lisanne Norman is a well rounded woman who plays video games to vacillate her writing mood and she believes it gives her added unworldly experiences that are available in real life. She doesn’t own a television but watches her favorite shows on her computer. It’s funny but one of her favorite television shows is on the SyFy channel, Sanctuary, but being a writer she doesn’t like that the plot of the series isn’t leading somewhere or have a purpose.
She started writing the first novel of the Sholan Alliance series, Turning Point in 1993 with seven subsequence novels later. Her latest novel, Shades of Grey was published in 2010 and is the second to last book of the Sholan Alliance series. Turning Point is a short novel about the first contact of a young woman telepath, Carrie with Kusac, a Sholan telepath who’s a crash landing survivor from a surveyor ship that was shot down by the Valtegan’s, aliens that forcefully occupied the planet Keiss. The next novels are a series of events in the relationship of Carrie and Kusac. There is sex, violence, and political intrigue in the series. Lisanne Norman introduces characters that befriend the couple but she also has characters that are detrimental and the couple has to overcome each blockage to be able to sustain their love.
The Sholan Alliance is a wonderful series that makes for good reading and I recommend this series to any science fiction fantasy reader.
Sources
Lisanne Norman Homepage
Lisanne Norman Bibliography