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
Amazons they are also called "Antianeirai" (, singular , "") ("against men") and Aeschylus, in his work "Prometheus Bound", used "styganor" () ("those who loathe all men"). Herodotus and Strabo placed them on the banks of the Thermodon and Themiscyra. Herodotus also mentions that some Amazons lived at Scythia because after the Greeks defeated the Amazons in battle, they sailed away carrying in three ships as many Amazons as they had been able to take alive, but out at sea the Amazons attacked the crews and killed them, then these Amazons landed at Scythian lands. Strabo writes that the original home