Strong Winds series allusion to Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons series as well as other works, particularly R.L. Stevenson's "Treasure Island" and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's "Song of Hiawatha". Cassandra Jardine, reviewing for "The Daily Telegraph", wrote ""The Salt-Stained Book"... is not just a homage to the Swallows and Amazons stories. Donny and Anna, Jones's fictional characters, live in the contemporary world, escaping social workers, rather than pirates. There's far more emotion than in Ransome's books" but "they share the same confident, risk-taking spirit..." Amanda Craig, reviewing "The Salt-stained Book" for "The Times" "...wasn't sure about the historical framing device that gives the novel
Last of the Amazons to the walls of Athens and to eventual oblivion as a people. Most of the story is told through a series of interlocked flashbacks and recollections by an Athenian girl, Bones; her governess, the captive Amazon Selene; and Bones's uncle Damon, Selene's lover. In 2002, the year of its publication, the novel was optioned for adaptation as a feature film by James Cameron, but nothing eventually came of it. Last of the Amazons Last of the Amazons is a novel by Steven Pressfield that recounts the legend of Theseus and the Amazons, set before the threshold of recorded history, a