This was the first novel of the King's Blades that Dave Duncan ever wrote - STOP! DON'T PANIC! You thought I was trying to sell you the first, inconclusive installment of a neverending series, didn't you? For shame! You've been reading too many books by Robert Jordan! And Terry Goodkind! And George R.R. Martin! And Raymond Feist! And Sharon Green! (If you don't know who Sharon Green is, then believe me, you ain't missing anything good! Forget I ever mentioned her!) Excuse me . . . I got carried away when I saw that flash of panic in your eyes. Now, where was I?

This novel is truly deserving of being called a "novel," rather than "The first ten percent of a story," or "the latest blood-and-thunder adventure of Conan the Barbarian which ends with him being precisely the same person he already was on Page 1." In it, Duncan follows his hero, Durendal, all the way from his adolescence to his old age, describing not just one brief heroic adventure, but a fascinating life of a great swordsman and a fine man. Subsequent novels in this same world have been set in the same general timeframe while focusing on different occurrences which affected the lives of different characters who are scarcely mentioned in The Gilded Chain (if they are mentioned at all). The other two principal novels in the series are Lord of the Fire Lands and Sky of Swords, and I recommend reading them in the order of publication (starting with this one, that is to say), but if you did read them first you still wouldn't know what to expect in the final scenes of The Gilded Chain before you picked it up. Are we all clear on that? Good!

I am not even giving anything significant away about the ending when I tell you that the novel extends into Durendal's old age, because the whole thing is done with a framing sequence that has us start out seeing certain events from the viewpoint of the aging Lord Roland, and much of the novel then occurs as a flashback interspersed with bits of activity by Lord Roland in the "present." It would take you about two minutes to figure out that the scenes detailing the younger days of Durendal are discussing the exact same character as the one who is now a senior statesman known as "Lord Roland" or simply "Roland," so I'm just saving a bit of time.

In the scene which chronologically should come first, the entry at Ironhall, we meet an adolescent boy (no name provided) who is apparently an illegitimate relative of a family of landed gentry, and such an inveterate troublemaker that they don't know what to do with him. It finally occurred to them to bring him to Ironhall, the training facility for the master swordsmen known as the Order of the King's Blades. "Blades" in this context refers to the graduates of the school rather than the sharp, pointy weapons they carry. The head of the Order, and thus head of the school, is simply called Grand Master. Grand Master tests the boy's agility, interviews him briefly to get some idea of his personality, and accepts him as a student. The training program normally lasts five years, and you can quit at any time if the regimen gets too tough - except that most of the boys who end up in Ironhall have nowhere else to go, really. To mark the beginning of a brand new life, each new boy starts out at the very bottom of the totem pole as "the Brat." No other name is used for him, until another new student is accepted, be it three days or three months later, at which time the now-former Brat is allowed to select his new name, usually by looking over the lists of Blades who have lived and died at some time in the past three centuries, and dusting off a name that appeals to him. You generally find a certain ferocity in the names they choose: Bandit, Dragon, Raider, Quarrel, Vicious, Bloodfang, Wolfbiter, Lion, and Snake all spring to mind. I admit that some of them take names that sound more "normal."

At the end of the five years comes the binding. The King of Chivial subsizides and controls Ironhall. He decides who each Blade will be assigned to. Since Blades tend to be the finest swordsmen in the known world, he keeps about half of them for his personal Guard. The rest are handed out to friends, relatives, and other important people. The magical binding ritual creates a relationship between Blade and "ward" such that the most important thing in the Blade's life is to protect the ward's life at any cost to himself. If necessary, a true Blade would throw himself on a live hand grenade to protect his ward from the blast, although this is your typical "medieval fantasy" society and gunpowder isn't an issue yet. Durendal was probably meant to be bound to someone else, but through a slight mishap he ends up as the personal Blade to a petty, ineffectual, unscrupulous man who managed to get a noble title and a Blade as prizes from the King (don't you love politics?). The man is rather stunned to discover that having a Blade who is sworn to protect you does not mean you have a slave who is obligated to obey your every whim if he doesn't want to. Shocking, isn't it?

Of course, we know this can't last. Durendal has to go out and do some heroic stuff for this novel to amount to anything. That will come soon enough, but in the meantime I'll give you a bit of a cliffhanger: right after he first arrives (accompanying his new ward) at the Royal Palace, he is summoned to the King's presence for a bit of fencing practice. (By ancient tradition, any Blade who is sworn and bound to anyone other than the current King is required to stick a safety clause in his oath as he makes it, proclaiming that his loyalty to the King comes ahead of his duty to his ward. The Kings of Chivial don't want other people's Blades committing regicide during a civil war if they can avoid it.) King Ambrose steps into the ring with Durendal to spar with him, and orders him to do his best! Don't hold back just because the opponent is royalty! Poor, innocent, conscientious Durendal takes that at face value. It's a clear and direct order, right? Unfortunately, every other Blade in the King's Guard has, for years, permitted the King to think he is a far better swordsman than he actually is, and . . . well, let's just say that the resulting scene is highly embarrassing from our hero's point of view.

The novel is extremely well-written, and I speak as a sword & sorcery junkie who's read more novels about brave swordsmen than I care to tally up. Durendal actually has a brain and uses it in his problem-solving efforts, which puts him way ahead of some of the competition in this genre. Romance, ethical quandaries, action, tragedy, humor, political intriguing (the more time you spend hanging around the palace, the more political intriguing you soak up through osmosis even if you don't want to), mysteries to be pondered, and a plot which stretches across decades, actually allowing us to see long-range consequences of various decisions, good and bad, all in the covers of one book. I myself was surprised to see such a great character introduced, developed, and even advanced to old age all in one volume, when an awful lot of other authors would have gone for a ten-volume series, aging him by about one year each volume now that they knew they had a good idea and were afraid to let go of it! Of course, Duncan had already written a great many other SF/Fantasy novels before this one, and thus knew perfectly well that he was capable of generating another great character after he finished with this one. Pity that some fantasists don't have the courage to let go of the stuff that first made their reputations, in favor of moving on to something new and different instead of endlessly recycling the same old, same old.

Recommended: Yes