Risuko by David Kudler

Risuko by David Kudler

Samurai, assassins, warlords -- and a girl who likes to climb

Tight, exciting, and thoughtful. The characters are nicely varied and all the pieces fit into place deftly. -- Kirkus Reviews

Kano Murasaki, you may not realize it, but I have done you a great favor. I have it in my power to give you a gift that you don't even realize you desire. Make yourself worth my trouble, and you will be glad of it. Disappoint me, and you will be very, very sorry.

Though Japan has been devastated by a century of civil war, Risuko just wants to climb trees. Growing up far from the battlefields and court intrigues, the fatherless girl finds herself pulled into a plot that may reunite Japan -- or may destroy it. She is torn from her home and what is left of her family, but finds new friends at a school that may not be what it seems.

Magical but historical, Risuko follows her along the first dangerous steps to discovering who she truly is.

The first volume of the Seasons of the Sword series

Can one girl win a war?

Kano Murasaki, called Risuko (Squirrel) is a young, fatherless girl, more comfortable climbing trees than down on the ground. Yet she finds herself enmeshed in a game where the board is the whole nation of Japan, where the pieces are armies, moved by scheming lords, and a single girl couldn't possible have the power to change the outcome.

Or could she?

Historical adventure fiction appropriate for young adult and middle-grade readers

NOW AVAILABLE

David Kudler is a writer and editor who lives just north of the Golden Gate Bridge with his actress, teacher, and author wife, Maura Vaughn, their aspiring authors, and their non-literary pets. In June 2016, his juvenile historical novel Risuko: A Kunoichi Story, set in sixteenth-century Japan, was published. Bright Eyes, the sequel, is currently in the works. Stillpoint Digital Press is his company, and he is the publisher. He has directed the Joseph Campbell Foundation's publications program since 1999, editing three posthumous volumes of Campbell's previously unpublished work (Pathways to Bliss, Myths of Light, and Sake & Satori) and overseeing the production of over fifty print, ebook, print, audio, and video titles, including the third edition of the seminal The Hero with a Thousand Faces. David is the vice-president of the Bay Area Independent Publishers Association at the moment.