WHAT LITERARY JUDGES HAVE SAID ABOUT 'BEARER OF THE CHOSEN SEED'
"I found it a fascinating, highly professional and admirably executed work. I read every word of it, wondering what was coming next and how the story would end."
"He (Cameron Royce Jess) obviously has read a good deal and sees what he is describing---knows it intimately, has it before his mind's eye."
"The violence (economically conveyed) and other physical doings, including childbirth, always feel real. The waters and woods of this continent come alive in it, and can be very uncomfortable places to be at times."
"This novel is an intellectual one, too. It shows us a young woman having to cope with a variety of problematical matters -- Protestantism and Catholicism, relations between the sexes, the loss of loved ones, the differing needs and natures of her three young stepsons, the strangenesses of Indian cultures, the high importance for others of her pregnancy -- and doing so without the irritating wisdom of hindsight that comes in the kind of historical novel in which a heroine is given our own brand of 'enlightened' consciousness and the course of events always proves her to be right."
"We see Marie increasingly reasoning her way forward in terms that we can applaud, both in her exchanges with her young Jesuit captor and in the italicised, and to my mind, entirely successful dialogues that occur in her head with a dead Emperor. But she is thinking her way forward, and events in the novel never settle down into the comfortable pattern where we know who will live and who dies, and who the good guys and the bad guys are, and how they will behave. Nor is she herself a simplifying moralist.'
'Well done! A strong piece of writing with good use of history and excellent story structure. This novel would appeal to quite a number of readers - it is a popular area of interest!"
"Smooth, professional writing. Pleasurable reading, full of much intrigue. I don't usually read this type of novel, but took pleasure in this one. Excellent work!"