According to All Romance Ebooks, this book is 135,013 words long, which came out to 346 pages on my Nook.
Synopsis:
At the start of the book, Talon and her sisters are working for a group of traveling entertainers. Lyris and Bria sing, while Talon is an acrobat. All three girls were orphaned when barbarians came and killed their parents. Since then, Talon has pretended to be a boy in order to protect her sisters. The only ones who know her true gender are Lyris and Bria.
Talon and her sisters are performing for the royal family when an assassin kills Crown Prince Daric. Talon pushes Lyris out of the assassin's path and inadvertently saves Princess Shasta's life. King Soltran finds out that Talon is a girl and decides she would make a perfect bodyguard for Shasta - he figures there would be no chance of improper behavior.
Time passes, with Bria and Lyris acting as Shasta's maids and companions and Talon acting as Shasta's bodyguard. Talon realizes, to her shock, that she's attracted to other women. Shasta, for her part, has no idea that Talon is a woman and eventually develops a crush on her guardian. Things aren't completely relaxed in the kingdom, however - the assassin who killed Daric is still on the loose, and Shasta may still be in danger.
Review:
This was one of two books I purchased when I decided I wanted to give Bold Strokes Books' f/f fiction a shot. Sword of the Guardian was my first choice – when I read that it starred a princess and her cross-dressing guardian, I knew I had to have it. It was a surprise to me that I enjoyed Jane Fletcher's Rangers at Roadsend as much as I did, and I fully expected to enjoy Shannon's Sword of the Guardian even more. Unfortunately, Sword of the Guardian turned out to be a disappointment.
