I’m not someone who likes romance let alone reads it, but I jumped at the chance to read this book because it promised martial arts fights. I’m pleasantly surprised to have read a narrative that tastefully meshed romance, balanced nicely with sword fights and martial arts. This story made me forget that it was first a romance with the martial arts second.

Butterfly Swords by Jeannie Lin is that book.

With all my book reading and reviewing, I’m aghast to find I’d neglected to include the one book that got me back on the romance path. Grammar Gremlins: As Such, Therefore I.Grammar Gremlins: Allegory, Alliteration, and Allusion.Grammar Gremlins: Managing Misplaced Modifiers.Writing a Novel One Hundred Words at a Time.Introduction to Scrivener for Novelists.Visit Jeannie’s author page at Amazon for her books, and her web site/blog at. And I’m delighted that she has several more Tang Dynasty novels on the way. I have The Dragon and the Pearl waiting on my Kindle (along with its accompanying novella, The Lady’s Scandalous Night), and I’m looking forward to see how Jeannie turns Li Tao, the villain of Butterfly Swords, into the hero of this book. If you have a Kindle, read the story of Mei Lin, Ai Li’s grandmother, first. Ai Li and Ryam’s travels take them to the highest levels of society and the farthest reaches of the Empire and, of course, to a happy ending. The story of Ai Li, sword-wielding runaway bride, and Ryam, the wandering barbarian soldier who comes to her aid, is both passionate and exciting, and full of fascinating descriptions of life under the Tang Dynasty.

I’ve recently finished reading Butterfly Swords, and it is every bit as good as I expected. By then I had a Kindle, so when I got home I downloaded Butterfly Swords and the accompanying novella, The Taming of Mei Lin. Those few pages were enough to tell me I had missed an author I really wanted to read. When I went to the RWA National Conference in New York in June 2011, I hadn’t read the book, or even seen a copy, but in the Goody Room I picked up a simple promotional pamphlet for Jeannie’s second novel, The Dragon and the Pearl. I was impressed that Jeannie had done so well with a manuscript set in a time period that conventional wisdom said would never sell, and that she had followed her instincts and her heart, writing the stories that she wanted to write.Ĭonventional wisdom was wrong, and Butterfly Swords sold to Harlequin Historical and was published in 2010. I never judged it myself, but I heard that it was very good indeed. I first became familiar with the title when the manuscript reached the finals of numerous RWA-sponsored contests Butterfly Swords won the Golden Heart for Historical Romance in 2009. Is a romance set in Tang Dynasty (eighth century) China.

Butterfly swords jeannie lin