sleep is for those who cannot hear cthulhu call (i hate youtube)

Stolen from dine here:

Jim Hines takes on the manly, extremely manly, did I mention manly? task of calling out the Fake Writer Girls! by name, so as we can all immediately identify them and their girl-cootie books. I'd like to thank the commenters for exhaustively listing all the Fake Girl Writers. Y'know, for disapproving of them purposes. So much disapproval. Hopefully the comprehensive list someone is diligently making will be up soon for ease of disapproval purposes.

Question

This is because I have googled and googled forever and cannot seem to get my keywords to find this book, so trying here.

I'm looking for a fantasy book about a kingdom (monarch of some kind ruled land?) that is the target of a conqueror and the army is made up of father and daughter pairs; the father is called the Prime (or the best pair father is called the Prime) and the daughter is called something that starts with an S and is not Satchie, Sachie, Sechie, Setchie, but it's like that. They wore headbands to symbolize their warrior bond, and this was one of the best books I ever read, but as this was before Kindle, it was a paperback lost to the wilds of moving. The religion is goddess-based and the main character marries into the royal family due to her being part of the father and daughter army's lead pair and her mother in law tries to poison the peppers and oil the girl received from her grandmother.

Finally, Octopus Crawling on Land Aka All of the Nightmares - somehow, this combines the chest-seizing horror of a snake's slither with what the despairing screams of billions would look like if they had corporeal form.

ETA:

The book is The Sword and the Lion, by Roberta Cray, aka Ru Emerson. Thank you, kyriacarlisle!!

Comments

[ratcreature]

I'm not too thrilled with snakes, though not phobic or anything, but slithering or not the octopus didn't seem threatening. I mean, it wasn't big nor very fast on land, but still impressive how it made it out of its element. Kind of plucky for venturing out of the water onto land.