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 These Amazons started from Libya, passed through Egypt and Syria, and stopped at the Caïcus in Aeolis, near which they founded several cities. Later, he says, they established Mytilene a little way beyond the Caïcus. Aeschylus, in Prometheus Bound, places the original home of the Amazons in the country about Lake Maeotis and they later moved to Themiscyra on the Thermodon. Homer tells that the Amazons were sought and found somewhere near Lycia. Notable queens of the Amazons are Penthesilea, who participated in the Trojan War, and her sister Hippolyta, whose magical girdle, given to her by her father Ares,