The Stormlord Trilogy by Glenda Larke (called the Watergivers trilogy in Australia, and maybe some other countries) is a secondary world epic fantasy, consisting of three volumes, The Last Stormlord, Stormlord Rising, and Stormlord's Exile. I wholeheartedly recommend it as a fine adventure epic with nifty political intrigue, knotty moral dilemmas, clever and consistent worldbuilding, and emotionally affecting characterization. The reason I'm mentioning it here is one particular character, a FtM transsexual. He doesn't appear until the third book, but he has a fairly major role to play when he appears.