Review by Anonymous, Edmonton County School, London
| have been reading the book called | am Lydia, by the author J.Ryan. My favourite character is the main character, Lydia, because normally books based in that time have the image of women as a sort of object and that they have to do what they are told. But in this book Lydia is presented as strong and powerful. Whilst reading this book I learnt that women were sometimes in some places treated equally to men in the past. I learned about the period of history that the book was based on and I would like to find out more about this period of time Personally I find it interesting the book defies the stereotypical image of women and how they need to be seen but not heard. In this book girls and boys have the same opportunities and an equal education. I would definitely recommend the book to other students because it is just an amazing read, but if some students have trouble reading small words | would probably not recommend it to those people because the book does uses small words. Overall, it is a great read and | definitely recommend giving it a go.

Review by Hanna, The British School of Milan, Sir James Henderson
I enjoyed reading this book as it was set in Spartan times, however the book was about a girl who was part of the army, which is an interesting idea as that was not possible at the time. The plot of the book was intriguing as the main character, Lydia as a part of the army is part of a conquest of establishing a Greek colony, and then moving forward and invading other parts of the world, it was very interesting and at points it was quite serious when describing battles or more serious topics, however those moments were broken up by moments of romance between the main character and another character who had come on this conquest, so we see their relationship develop throughout the book as well as seeing the action happening throughout. I didn’t know much about the Spartan times before reading this book, so it was very interesting reading about times and places that I hadn’t really known much about before hand and despite the book being fiction, I feel that I have learnt something about how Spartan society functioned and the world at the time. I would recommend this book to students who are interested in fiction writing about battles and / or themes such as conquering other places, however also things such as romance and themes of developing love. The action in the book is very fast-paced, however at times I found it hard to focus / draw into the action as there were little descriptions so I found it hard to visualise and place myself in the action, however if you like fast-paced books with a lot of action that are not too heavy I would highly recommend this book.