"Let's have Vulcan create a bunch of super-duper magic swords and scatter them across the map! Then we can play a game, based on which mortals succeed or fail in their various endeavors after finding one Sword or another! Place your bets, gods and goddesses!"
That is not a quote from this book, nor any of the later ones. However, it is my best effort to reconstruct what must have happened immediately before the first scene in the Prologue of this book. This world is apparently afflicted - I mean blessed, of course! - with a large number of mythological deities, most of whom commonly use Greek or Roman names in their time onstage. Vulcan, Hermes, Zeus, Aphrodite, Apollo, Mars. Some non-Graeco-Roman names, as well as a couple of characters who are regarded as deities by mortals but were invented by Saberhagen in previous works (although I didn't know that at first). This book was properly only the first part of a three-volume storyline, rather than being a complete novel in its own right. By the time the trilogy was drawing to a close, the gods and goddesses had slowly realized that authorizing Vulcan to create those incredible blades and hand them out to mortals had been a fearful (or even fatal) blunder, which is why I asked WretchedPyro if reviews on all three volumes could qualify for his Write-Off.
[WARNING: DIGRESSION BEGINS ON THIS STORY'S PROPER PLACE IN SABERHAGEN'S FANTASY WORKS]
When I first read this book in the mid-80s I had never heard of the "Changeling Earth" trilogy (as it was sometimes called) written by Saberhagen many years before. Nor was I aware that the trilogy had been subsequently reprinted in one omnibus paperback volume under the name "Empire of the East." Nor was I aware that this new trilogy, beginning with The First Book of Swords and continuing on through the creatively titled The Second Book of Swords and The Third Book of Swords was set in the same world as Saberhagen's previous trilogy, only two thousand years later. I began to develop suspicions, however, as I went through this book and kept spotting references to the deity Ardneh, the deity Draffut, Ardneh's final struggle with the master of the demons (Orcus) approximately two thousand years prior to the time of the Books of Swords, and other events which it seemed Saberhagen hoped I would already have heard about. Also references to lingering remnants of Old World technology. "Technology" in Mark's day appears to have switched places with magic - unreliable, scarce, and almost no one really understands it. After I ended up reading Empire of the East, I became better informed on the powerful and benevolent entity of Ardneh, the Change that turned the hi-tech world of the 20th Century into the hi-magic, low-tech world of Saberhagen's fantasy novels, and so forth. I mention this to give you fair warning that if you are a real stickler for reading books in the proper order, you would want to find a copy of Empire of the East before pressing forward with The First Book of Swords. However, that wasn't the way I did it, and I wasn't hopelessly confused. (I will also mention in passing that after this trilogy ended, Saberhagen did about a dozen more books set in the same world and dealing with many of the Swords, but the trilogy is a complete story in its own right and resolves several things at the end of the last volume, so don't panic!). [END OF DIGRESSION - WE NOW RETURN YOU TO THE NORMALLY SCHEDULED REVIEW]
In the first few pages, we see Vulcan the Smith making preparations for an ambitious project: the forging of twelve great Swords. It occurs to him that he may need some human flunkies to help with details, keeping the fires going for instance, and of course it would be singularly appropriate to quench each blade in human blood when it's been beaten into shape. (Mythological deities are notoriously prone to look upon the lives of individual humans the same way you and I look upon the lives of individual insects.) We then skip forward several days, without seeing the manufacture of the Swords at all. A young woman named Mala has just arrived in a village, looking for her betrothed, Jord the smith. Jord, we quickly learn, was one of six local men whom Vulcan recruited for his recent project, and is the sole survivor. Apparently Vulcan sliced up the other five to get sufficient blood for his purposes, then sliced off Jord's arm, then decided that was enough blood and there was no reason not to let Jord survive to tell the tale. Out of the boundless generosity that so characterizes mythological deities, Vulcan even gave Jord one of the twelve blades they had just manufactured, as payment for his trouble, saying it was for Jord and his son after him. The sword is called Townsaver, and that's all Jord knows about it. As this scene ends, it appears that Mala is being seduced by a man who wears a leather mask and doesn't seem to be part of the local community, which pretty well covers all we know about him. Nine months later as she's going into labor (she's now married to Jord, who thinks it's his baby) she has a vision in which all the gods and goddesses are standing around her, arguing about something, but she's not too clear on details. Then she sees the masked figure of the man she believes to be her child's father saying: "His name is Mark. My mark is on him, and he is mine." Obviously a child of destiny, whatever that means.
End of Prologue. Chapter 1 starts thirteen years after Vulcan made those Swords, when Mark is a bright young lad twelve years old. Coming home from the hunt he finds that the local Duke has sent a cousin and a wizard to visit their village and ask Jord to permit a close examination of the sword he got from Vulcan way back when. Wait a minute! A dozen mystic blades were made by Vulcan; they were presumably scattered all over the map; one eyewitness (Jord) told people he had one of those swords himself when he got back home, and presumably some of the others started to attract public attention in whatever locales they were sent to - and yet Saberhagen asks us to believe that none of the real movers and shakers in the political setup of this world did anything in reaction to these events that we need to know about? Not for the first thirteen years after the rumors started flying, anyway?
Saberhagen doesn't give us too much time to worry about this, though. Just as the sword is brought out for the wizard to peer at, bandits attack the village! Mark's half-brother (as he thinks) grabs Townsaver and it starts wreaking destruction upon the attackers, their target being this nice innocent town, after all. By the time the first chapter is over with, we have gotten a pretty good idea of the strengths and limitations of Townsaver and Mark is on the run, a fugitive from justice, because he fired an arrow which missed the bad guy he was aiming at and accidentally killed the Duke's cousin instead, and the Duke is not known to have a vast tolerance for such things. Mark takes Townsaver with him, and begins to travel. He starts meeting other people who will become running characters in this trilogy. I might mention in passing that his mother, Mala, has always nursed the hope that the masked man who impregnated her was actually Duke Fraktin himself, although Mark does not know that she believes this, and when we eventually see the Duke meeting Mala he doesn't recognize her at all, even after she drops hints. The mystery of Mark's father will run throughout the trilogy before he finally gets it all straightened out. In the meantime, Mark ends up at the castle of the independent ruler called Kind Sir Andrew, who soons find himself threatened by large armies closing in from two sides at once, partially because of their desire to get their hands on any Swords that happen to be laying around. At least one of the Swords, in fact, shows signs of having a mind of its own in the way it shifts from owner to owner, ending up in Mark's hands as the book ends. (But will it stay there?)
Another ongoing problem, putting plenty of mystery into this storyline, is that none of the Swords came with an instruction manual. A few names are dropped, and at one point a character who is considered by some to be a mythological deity himself is heard to quote a couple of lines about Townsaver, apparently from some poem or song. At the very end of the book, we are given the full text. Twelve verses, one for each blade, with hints of what the blade is good for, although precious few details. Where this poetic catalog of the Swords came from is not explained, but it seems to be accurate.
Four of the twelve Swords are seen onstage at one time or another in this volume: Townsaver, Dragonslicer, Coinspinner, and Sightblinder. It gradually becomes clear that each of the twelve has its own special powers and/or limitations, although at first glance each of them was manufactured according to the same design. Long, double-edged, a black hilt with a small white symbol on it (different symbol for each sword), and a blade that seems to be made of mirror-bright steel that never rusts or dulls.
There is an admiring critical essay by Sandra Miesel at the end of this volume, at least in the original paperback edition of the early 80s (it may have been dropped from the reprint editions by now, dare we hope?), which I advise you to take with a grain of salt, or even skip entirely. Its principal use to me was that it filled in some details on what happened in the preceding trilogy.
If you like tales of heroic fantasy, with built-in mysteries regarding the exact nature of the weird magical paraphernalia that the major characters are always trying to use, I recommend reading this first volume, at least. Saberhagen's style is not so poetic as Zelazny's, nor are his characterizations as deep as some of my other favorite fantasists, but he makes an effort to be interesting and I liked the book well enough when I first read it. Of course, I was a bit less discriminating then, but I still went on to buy the second and third ones with my own money. As well as Empire of the East, the prequel trilogy-in-one-volume, which was actually quite entertaining overall.
This has been the first of three installments in my contribution to WretchedPyro's Double-Edged Blade writeoff. Other participants include adjensen * David.C * egab01 * fez_monkey * foghorn * InfoScott * kurt_messick * lunadisarm * machkick * monssfisch * mtbat * naphtalia * night_vision * Solid_Snake * systemdwn * WretchedPyro * Xeno3998 * if you want to check their Profiles to see what they are contributing.
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