Is there violence in this book (and why?)
Well, yes there's violence in the book. It wouldn't be very real to write a book like this where everyone was a pacifist vegetarian monk, would it? But there's no depravity. What does that mean? It means that there's nothing like what we have today, people torturing helpless victims and that kind of disgusting stuff. The members of The Tribe are a people who value personal honor over life itself. If a person's honor is lost, he or she has no place in The Tribe after that. And since they would find themselves on their own on an uncivilized continent, their chances of survival would not be good. But the book is set in a world where people hunt for a living. A world where people get killed in the normal course of the day. A world where there's no modern medicine to bring people back to life and keep them alive after they're no longer viable. Their attitude is different from ours. I've lived in places where things are like the world I'm describing. It's not something I'm making up. It's the way people have been throughout most of their history. All except our time in the parts of the world we call the Developed World or the First World.
While I've tried to make this fictional world real, there are some things I have consciously glossed over. We know from history that before modern medicine, people faced a very different life. Amputation was about the only thing one could do for a wound or injury. Infection nearly always killed an injured person. Disease ravaged whole peoples, drastically reducing their numbers. None of these "real" things are considered in this book, I really didn't think dwelling on such stuff would make it any better, and certainly not more enjoyable to read. The only reason I mention this is to make it clear that this is not a flaw in my design, but a deliberate omission.
The Federals, the people who live to the south regard The Tribe in much the same way that our ancestors regarded the American Indians, as something to be eliminated like one might regard rats. The people of The Tribe are struggling to survive, and in the end they have a great battle with the Federals, a battle in which they decisively defeat the Federal Army. And, incidentally, a battle in which their women form the core of their combat army.