Bargain @ $1.99 for today only (March 4th) from Open Road Media, according to the newsletter (couponable @ Kobo, price should be valid for all the standard Canada & US retailers, may or may not also be discounted in other regions, etc.):
The Ladies of Mandrigyn by Locus Award-winner Barbara Hambly (
ISFDB,
Wikipedia), one of my favourite fantasy authors, and incidentally one of my favourites of her series. This is the 1st in her Sun Wolf and Starhawk trilogy of epic low fantasy starring a mercenary leader who discovers some surprising things about himself that would be a spoiler for this first book, in which he gets asked to train a group of women in a captured city as a strike force in the hopes of freeing their enslaved men so that they can begin a revolution against the evil wizard-king, originally out from Del Rey in 1984.
I highly recommend this, as IMHO, these are very good books about politics, ethics, and the cost of various forms of power, privilege, and responsibility (and in this particular installment, societal gender relations as well), woven in very well with convincing personalities and invented cultural backgrounds and ongoing character development.
ORM does have a money-saving omnibus of this (which I picked up at a deep discount for $3.99 from Kobo during their Cyber Monday sale as an ePub supplement to the Amazon individuals I'd bought several years ago), but it rarely goes on sale and the other 2 books sometimes also drop to $1.99 each more periodically, so this is a very good price for the 1st if you want to try and and aren't sure about committing to the entire trilogy.
This has a perfectly standalone story in it which can be read and enjoyed without ever following up on the rest of it, as the overarching arc is one of the characters' journey of self-discovery, rather than a rescue-the-world-from-evil plot where you don't find out if they win until the 3rd book (that bit gets resolved long before then, just so you're not left hanging).
ETA:
B&N &
Amazon &
Google Play linkage to make this more convenient for you to get, which I highly recommend you do if it sounds like it might be your kind of thing, if you prefer shopping there.
A brilliant mercenary must lead his army against the forces of the most powerful wizard alive
Gifted with courage, strength, and the intelligence to know when to fight, Sun Wolf is the greatest mercenary in a land overrun by war. With his first lieutenant, Starhawk—a woman more deadly than any man—at his side, he has laid waste to countless cities, taking the best of their treasures for himself, and distributing the rest among his bloodthirsty crew.
Then a woman comes to him, an emissary from the town of Mandrigyn, a lush port city recently sacked by a powerful, mad wizard of unmatched abilities. She offers Sun Wolf untold riches for the use of his army, but the captain is not fool enough to wage war against a magician. He refuses her offer, but that is not the end of it. The women of Mandrigyn can be very persuasive.
This ebook features an illustrated biography of Barbara Hambly, including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection.