Type of bind: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN num: 9780385190473
ISBN number: 0385190476
Label: Doubleday
Manufacturer: Doubleday
Page Count: 326
Printing Date: 1985-03
Publishing house: Doubleday
Sale Popularity Level: 788491
Studio: Doubleday
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Rated by buyers 
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Lalla is rescued from a horrible Afghan life by Kassim, a surly and taciturn man who turns out to be an English spy. But, when she returns to England, she finds someone else has taken over her life. She eventually makes her way throughout England with Lord Henry, an eccentric man who takes her in.
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Fun and engaing story which has been well summarized by other reviewers. I just finished reading Golden Urchin by this author, and it now ranks as one of my favorite books ever! So, I have been working my way through Madeline Brent's other novels. So far of the three that I have read - Golden Urchin, Tregarrons Daughter and now Stormswift, this is my least favorite. Don't get me wrong- it is a great book which I had to finish in one setting because it was so gripping. I was rooting for our heroine to end up with Caspar ( tall, brooding and mysterious- my type of hero!), which is why I was disappointed. I am now on to read Merlins Keep. If you liked this book, please read Golden Urchin, it is even better.
Rated by buyers -
I have owned this book for many years and recently reread it. (I've been doing that a lot lately with books sitting on my shelf trying to remember why I had saved them and to see if I still want to keep them.)
This is a good story ... a little hard to believe all the coincidences later in the book to bring it to its end, but still an engaging read. The language is a bit stilted but as you read you get used to it and the word phrasing seems to reflect the way a person of that era might write and speak.
The book is set in Afghanistan and England during the late 1800s. I enjoy history and found the use of actual historical events and cultural elements from that time period to be well done and very interesting. I recently read that this book is a historical romance written by Peter O'Donnell under the pen name of Madeleine Brent. It is certainly not the typical torrid romance novel and I would not compare it to, or even call it, a romance novel of the type they put out today.
Rated by buyers -
"Madeleine Brent" is a pseudonym for Peter O'Donnell, the author of the Modesty Blaise novels (and comics). As Brent he wrote a number of historical romances. This is one of the later ones, and a pretty good one.
Stormswift opens in Afghanistan in the 1880s. Jemimah Lawley, the spoiled daughter of a British civil servant who was killed in the Kabul massacre in 1979, has spent the past couple of years in an isolated "kingdom", at very first as the "wife" of the local pacha, then as the slave of the local doctor, a Greek/English man who has himself been a captive of the local Kafirs for decades. After her rape by the pacha, who then discarded her after she failed to provide him a child, she has adapted well to being the doctor's assistant, and she is no longer spoiled. But then she is sold to another local pacha -- this one with a reputation for extreme sadism. She decides to escape, and the doctor arranges for her to go in the company of a peddler, Kassim.
Kassim, it turns out, is not what he seems. He hates Jemimah, out of resentment for his obligation to rescue her. But in the end she saves his life -- and she learns that he is actually a British spy posing as an Afghan. And she hears his mysterious delirious reference to "Melanie ... Stormswift ... bitch-goddess".
Jemimah returns to England, only to find that an imposter claiming to be her has taken over her home. She ends up touring the countryside in a Punch and Judy show ... the beginning of a journey that will lead her -- by a series of coincidences (mostly in the end reasonably well explained, I should say) -- to meet once again Kassim, and to learn the secret of Stormswift -- and to learn who her true love is -- and to even help another long lost friend ...
It is certainly in many ways quite preposterous. But it is also great fun. There is no point complaining about the contrivances involved -- they are part of the deal, and "Brent" embraces them thoroughly rather than trying to make this any sort of naturalist novel. I will say that the end is a bit unsatisfying -- Jemimah is put in a wrenching personal situation (there are, perhaps unusually, two quite worthwhile candidates to be her true love) which ends up resolved very conveniently -- the whole finish is a bit abrupt, really. Still, fun work.
Rated by buyers 
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I discovered a couple Madeleine Brent books on a Free Books rack in the local library entrance hall. That was a lucky day for me! I immediately had to get my mitts on every other of her titles and have done so almost completely. STORMSWIFT was one of the best. I have never encountered a dull moment in any of her books and the heroine is always charmingly pragmatic. You love her personality in the beginning and are amazed to find you love her even more by the end. This one is set in Afghanistan, Pakistan and England. Our heroine suffers, perseveres, and encounters all sorts of interesting characters along her long journeys. Novels in recent years seem to be too well tailored to certain market tastes. You can almost picture novelists sitting with a list of the MOST POPULAR PLOT DEVICES given to them by their publishers before they even start their own story outlines. But Brent simply and consistently tells a ripping good yarn with lots of adventure and heartfelt romanticism. And every one of her novels is set in a totally different part of the world with a totally different adventure each time. You always get the well earned happy ending even though this particular book gives you a bit of a bittersweet one compared to her others I read.
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