A few dozen gods and goddesses are meeting to discuss the state of the world. Particularly the state of the game they have been playing for the past twenty-two years (or thereabouts) with Twelve Swords, powerful objects they had prevailed upon Vulcan the Smith to create for them. This scene (the first chapter of the book) was disappointing to me, for a variety of reasons, and I think I'll explore them in detail. (Stop screaming for mercy!)
First, we have the question of time lag. It is quickly established in dialogue that Hermes the Messenger, who was trying to gather up stray Swords in the final pages of the previous book, has now been dead for four years. (We saw how it happened - one of the humans he annoyed managed to use a Sword called Farslayer to strike Hermes dead. Farslayer acts something like a guided missile - you concentrate on who you want it to kill, and it flies out of your hand and heads straight for the heart of the target, no matter how far away he is.) The problem is that after four years these quarreling "deities" have not yet formulated any sort of policy on what they ought to do about the discovery that the Swords can even slay deities. (Some of them can, that is - each has a specialized function, and some of those functions have nothing to do with killing.) While shock and confusion were quite natural when the news first arrived, after four years they should have been able to move on to something more progressive than talking about their problems all day.
Second, we find they have a disgusting lack of organization. Gray-bearded Zeus tries to put himself forward as spokesman/moderator, but finds that people either boo and hiss, or else simply ignore any speeches he makes (from what we see of his speechmaking efforts, I have to agree that ignoring him was a lot more intelligent than breathlessly waiting for him to get to the point - if he had one). It is made clear that no one else is accepted as the "presiding officer" of this meeting either, which is reflected by the way some deities are apparently drifting in - and out - on whim at any given time. Nor are there any "rules of order" to keep people from all talking at once. In short, how a majority of them ever agreed to play a certain complicated game at all is completely beyond my understanding.
Third, we have the related issue of Saberhagen's continuing to be extremely vague on what sort of strategies, if any, the various divine gameplayers had been pursuing these past twenty-two years. When I read the first volume, it was established that the Swords were gamepieces of the gods, but no real details were provided. This situation continued in the second book. It had been my hope that in the third one we would see explanations of what had been going on, similar to the way the detective hero at the end of a whodunit will take a few pages to explain what's really been going on behind the scenes, who killed whom and for what reason, and so forth. Something that would impress us with the fiendish cunning and long-range planning abilities of these allegedly immortal and mythological deities. Revelations of which deity had arranged for a particular character to have a particular Sword fall into his hands, and how this deity had intended to benefit from that character's subsequent actions according to the rules of the game of the gods (whatever those rules may have been).
I might mention in passing that I felt the same disappointment when I finished Philip Jose Farmer's fourth Riverworld book, and that I often fear it will happen again whenever Robert Jordan finally declares his Wheel of Time series is concluding. Hints of wheels within wheels, very powerful character lurking in the background (usually, with occasional onstage appearances) and supposedly manipulating everything for their own reasons, and then a general failure to convincingly explain all the anomalies in their behavior when the story draws to a close. Occupational hazard in the business of multivolume SF/Fantasy epics, I suppose.
In this volume, we finally see some details of the ongoing warfare between such factions as Kind Sir Andrew, the Silver Queen, the nation of Tasavalta, and the Dark King (he's the utterly evil one). Mark, who's been working for Kind Sir Andrew off and on for several years now, ends up being gifted with Sightblinder by the Lord Draffut, who is commonly regarded as God of Healing by mortal men but does not claim divinity, and indeed seems to be of entirely a different stripe than the petty disputants we saw in Chapter 1. Sightblinder allows the bearer to look like someone familiar and reliable to anyone he meets. With it, Mark is able to infiltrate the headquarters camp of the Dark King, sit through a council of war, watch the Dark King use the Mindsword to hypnotize a set of deities who show up meaning to take it from him, rescue a captive girl, and make a clean getaway with her. On the way back to her homeland, they fall in love incredibly quickly and start talking about getting married. Possibly I was supposed to be overcome by the romance of it all, but it all happened so fast that I was actually thinking, "How incredibly contrived can you get?"
I admit that Saberhagen partially redeemed himself by having nasty obstacles to their proposed marriage arise as soon as they made it back to Tasavalta. Then by having those obstacles finally dealt with in a reasonably logical fashion, once the long-running mystery of Mark's biological father was finally resolved (resolved, however, in such a way that it left plenty of room for doubt as to exactly what this character's abilities were and what agenda he was pursuing - but then, Saberhagen presumably knew he'd be writing sequels one of these days).
We finally get looks at the last three of the twelve Swords. We also see several cases where one Sword is pitted against another, either because the blades physically clash or because of a conflict of magical influences, one Sword trying to prevent the bearer from whatever effect another Sword is trying to force upon him. In addition, it was good to see Vulcan (creator of these pesky items) flailing about with Shieldbreaker, a supposedly invincible offensive/defensive weapon, and discovering the hard way that there was only tiny little technicality that he had failed to consider in his battleplan - with the result that he was defeated. I never saw that technicality coming, but after it happened, I began to see how logical it was. I appreciate it when an author does that to me. Saberhagen clearly put a great deal of thought into the natures of his twelve Swords, then let his characters only gradually start working out the pros and cons of each item.
From the viewpoint of the gods, however, this story was disastrous. Not only did the Swords continue to demonstrate their abilities to make deities unhappy or dead, but even the surviving ones were feeling their powers slipping away, slowly but surely, and it appears that if they had never created those Swords, it never would have happened. Something to do with altering the human attitudes toward mythical powers, I take it. (These deities primarily existed because humans believed they did, which is circular logic but oddly reasonable under the circumstances.) As the story ends, it appears that the gods are finally done for (which I consider a good thing for the human race, all things considered), but most of the Swords they created are around to stay.
Overall, I recommend reading this story, always assuming you have already read the previous two in the trilogy, so you will appreciate the various loose ends which this book addresses. Remember, you can find out more about the previous two books by reading my last two opinions before this one! (HINT HINT HINT!)
This has been Part 3 of 3 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.
Recommended:
