The broken sword
'The first great modern American fantasy' Baird Searles Thor has broken the sword Tyrfing so that it cannot strike at the roots of Yggdrasil, the tree that binds together earth, heaven and hell. But now the mighty sword is needed again to save the elves in their war against the trolls, and only Scafloc, a human child kidnapped and raised by the elves, can hope to persuade Bolverk the ice-giant to make Tyrfing whole again. But Scafloc must also confront his shadow self, Valgard, the changeling who has taken his place in the world of men.
Stats for nerds
2recommend
5mentions
5people
2018–2025years
40% recommend60% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- "Indeed, I’ve probably already spent more time on the historical backstory of Broken Sword here than it deserves..."
Not at all. What a great review of a beloved sub-genre. Sometimes I think about re-reading Foucault's Pendulum out of sheer joy at the memory. But then I usually get by with just recommending it to someone else who foolishly brings up anything in the Dan Brown/Indiana Jones space.
- I recently read the Elric books and loved them. A friend said they're the written expression of an airbrushed 70s conversion van, or some heavy metal album cover. They're rough, but alive in a way eg. Sanderson can only glimpse.
Also, Gloriana was great (very different from Elric).
In this vein, Poul Anderson's The Broken Sword is probably my favorite; it's direct and raw, like a bare knuckle punch in the face :).
- It was the first instance of an author asking the question, "Can fantasy be written which is not a direct copying of _The Lord of the Rings_?"
and it is interesting to contrast it with texts such as _The Broken Sword_ by Poul Anderson (first published the same year as _The Fellowship of the Ring_) and _The Charwoman's Shadow_ by Lord Dunsany (published nearly 3 decades earlier).
- Elves and dwarves didn't strictly mean children's fairy tales prior to Tolkien. There's plenty of semi-popular prior art where they feature, like the Worm Ouroboros or The King of Elfland's Daughter. Poul Anderson also published The Broken Sword the same year as LOTR, which shows a lot of the same influences as written by a very different author.
Tolkien's importance is that the specific kinds of creatures he wrote became the default for virtually all subsequent authors and the popularity/quality of the works were pivotal in establishing fantasy as a "proper" genre.
- "Mortals never sell me their souls. They give them away." -Satan, "The Broken Sword" by Poul Anderson
