The Broken Sword, an (audio) review

Note: This post also appears on SFFaudio.com.

The Viking Age of England offers fertile ground for storytelling. It was a time of strong men, beautiful fair-haired women, and bloody raids for plunder. Christianity was the new religion on the block, striving to make inroads on the old pagan beliefs—and often at the point of a sword. Gods were said to mingle with men and the world lay poised on the edge of Ragnarok, a final battle and fiery conflagration that would end the world.

Poul Anderson drew on the best of this wild and poetic age, stirred it up with myth and fantasy, and the result was his 1954 novel The Broken Sword. Its like has rarely been matched in the annals of fantasy literature.

I’ve read The Broken Sword previously and knew what a wonderful book it was, but TV and film actor Bronson Pinchot’s narration in this new Blackstone Audio, Inc. production added a new dimension to the novel. I had first heard Pinchot in a reading of Stephen King’s Eyes of the Dragon. While he was wonderful there he ups his game in The Broken Sword, reading with a spite and fury in his voice that perfectly matches the book’s unrelenting grimness and battle fury. Pinchot breathes life into beautiful maidens and proud warriors, deep-throated trolls, and ancient elven warrior-kings whose voices are like winds sighing through treeless leaves.

Oddly enough there is exactly one sound effect in the entire recording—an echo effect used to convey the cold, cruel laughter of Odin—and it’s on the final disc. It was cool but rather jarring, considering it’s on the last disc and there’s no precursor. But on to the tale.

In The Broken Sword the land of Faerie exists alongside the lands of men, invisible save to those with the witch sight. Faerie is a land of bright castles and achingly lovely elves, of the gods of Odin and Tyr, the giants of Jotunheim, black-eyed trolls, and other, fouler monsters.

Pride and ambition touches off the events of The Broken Sword. Orm the Strong is the fifth son of Ketil Asmundsson and thus low in the totem pole of inheritance. Rather than accept a smaller share of wealth Orm seeks his own fortune by going a–viking. On one of his raids he kills a husband and his sons, burning their hall to the ground. The man’s mother, a witch, escapes and swears revenge: She bestows a curse that Orm’s eldest son will be fostered beyond the world of men, while he in turn will foster a wolf that will one day rend him.

The elf-earl Imric travels to the lands of men and sets the witch’s curse in motion. Imric takes Orm’s unbaptized infant son Skafloc and replaces him with Valgard, a changeling, whom Imric himself has fathered by raping a captive troll woman. Valgard’s dark ancestry is evident when he bites his unknowing mother’s breast and grows restless and violent in Orm’s care. Skafloc, raised among the elves, is fair haired and fair of spirit, though equally mighty and otherwise a mirror image of his dark changeling “brother.”

After he discovers his true half troll, half-elf heritage, Valgard embarks on a mission of revenge, killing several members of his foster family. Aided with an army of trolls he then launches a war of annihilation on the elven lands of Alfheim. Skafloc and the elves are beaten back by the initial assaults and all seems lost. Only by going on a quest to reforge a powerful ancient weapon—the eponymous broken sword, a weapon of terrible demonic power that demands blood each time it is drawn and ultimately turns on its wielder—can Skafloc save Alfheim and avenge his family.

Though The Broken Sword seems largely forgotten these days it remains influential. The elf Imric for example reveals the clear stylistic (and thematic) influence The Broken Sword had on subsequent authors like Michael Moorcock. Moorcock (a big fan of the book, who once wrote that The Broken Sword “knocked The Lord of the Rings into a cocked hat”) based his Melniboneans heavily on Anderson’s elves. Imric is (largely) Elric of Melnibone, not only in similarity of name, but in appearance and even character. Anderson’s Elves are darker than those in The Lord of the Rings (though I would point out that Tolkien’s elves closely resembled Anderson’s in his source material; see the prideful warrior Feanor from The Silmarillion). They are haughty, prideful, shun the sunlight, and if not malicious are certainly mischievous. These traits have their roots in Norse myth, which both Tolkien and Anderson drew upon.

Everything about the book is wonderfully northern. Characters mingle soaring verse with common speech in conversation. Anderson weaves old northern vocabulary into the tale, evocative words like “Fetch,” “Fey,” and “Weird” (the latter is a fate from which no man escapes), which lend The Broken Sword a hard northern ethos to match its flavor. In this pagan hierarchy the Norns are higher than the towering Jotuns or even the Aesir. Even the gods will die in the fires of Ragnarok at their appointed time. That grimness bleeds through into The Broken Sword as its protagonists are slowly crushed beneath the merciless wheel of fate.

"Throw not your life away for a lost love," pleaded Mananaan. "You are young yet."

"All men are born fey," said Skafloc, and there the matter stood.

This is hard stuff and an unforgiving outlook on life, though not incompatible with that other somewhat famous work that debuted in 1954—Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring. No matter what Moorcock—he of the tin ear when it comes to Tolkien analysis—may tell you.

The writing in The Broken Sword is top-notch, really and truly great stuff. A small sample of dialogue uttered by the troll-woman Gora:

“The world is flesh dissolving off a dead skull,” mumbled the troll-woman. She clanked her chain and lay back, shuddering. “Birth is but the breeding of maggots in the crumbling flesh. Already the skull’s teeth leer forth and black crows have left its eye sockets empty. Soon a barren wind will blow through its bare white bones.”



One final, important note about the Blackstone recording: The text is Anderson’s original from the 1954 version of the book, which Anderson updated in 1971 for republication in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy line. This is not immediately apparent from the description on the Blackstone website. I’ve only read the 1971 version, so for those who haven’t had the chance to experience The Broken Sword in its earliest and rawest incarnation you now have another chance.

Any other Edguy fans out there?

German power metal band Edguy is hard to pin down. On one album you're likely to hear medieval fantasy flavored songs in the vein of Iron Maiden or Blind Guardian alongside hair metal inspired hits like "Lavoratory Love Machine" and "King of Fools." They've been known to branch out into loud and proud power ballad material. Their material ranges from soaring bombast that sends chills down your spine, to goofy head-scratching attempts at humor that generally don't come off too well.

A common thread (if there is one) is that Edguy really, really seems to be enjoying themselves and doing whatever the hell they want.

I've gotta give credit to my friend Falze for turning me on to these guys. If you haven't heard of Edguy before (and most people in the States haven't, it seems), they're definitely worth checking out. Though their first full studio album is 1997's Kingdom of Madness, they sound like they picked up where 1988 left off and kept on playing. Their sound on songs like "Theatre of Salvation" (which incorporates an all-male church choir to great effect) is borderline divine. They're not afraid to do it big and epic, which is what I want when I listen to metal.

Some of their lyrics are ... puzzling, though I might chalk that up to a translation issue (Edguy is German but their songs are written in English). Others are grinningly good, like they've been taken from the pages of a purple swords and sorcery tale:

Prayers have been spoken
May the gods be on my side
May they join my way to bring me victory
seven at one stroke
my triumph and my pride
will be history

As I've stated on numerous occasions what draws me to certain metal acts is the singing, and Edguy shines in this regard. Tobias Sammet is a pretty awe-inspiring lead singer. He's got tremendous range and a great sound, which is why I have him in my top 10 metal vocalists of all time.

Some of my favorite Edguy songs include:

Jerusalem

Theater of Salvation

Vain Glory Opera

The Piper Never Dies

Babylon

Rise of the Morning Glory

Hallowed

If I had to pick a favorite album, it would probably be Hellfire Club by a hair, though Mandrake and Theater of Salvation are in the running, too. Their last couple albums have been a letdown but I'm hoping they return to form with Age of the Joker, due out in August.

Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse, a review

John Joseph Adams has a well-earned reputation as The Man Who Delivers Anthologies. Barnes & Noble.com has dubbed him “the reigning king of the anthology world.” By my count he’s published at least nine of them. I own one, The Living Dead, which contained enough zombie goodness (along with a few stiffs) to prompt me to buy his Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse.

To be honest, I probably would have bought Wastelands regardless of its editor. I’m a big fan of the post-apocalyptic genre, from novels like Cormac McCarthy’s The Road or Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz, to films like Escape from New York or Mad Max. Why? As an inhabitant of the northeastern seaboard of the United States I’m not often confronted with existential issues. I know that I’m going to die one day and suffer separation from all that I know and love, but because civilization affords me everything I need—and much of what I want, too—I tend not to think about these issues much. The panaceas of electricity and refrigeration, and healthcare and schools, and television and the internet and books, masks the skull beneath the skin. I’m effectively insulated from the hard life and death struggle that’s woven into so much of human history. But what if it was all stripped away, and life was reduced to its essentials? That’s the question post-apocalyptic fiction asks, and one I occasionally like to ponder. With my feet up on the couch of my air-conditioned living room, of course.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Black Gate website.

Books: This is Exactly How They Work

An arresting image making the rounds: http://a.yfrog.com/img13/8364/21063920857041414761211.jpg

I'm not sure who the credit for this piece of art goes to so I'm including the link rather than posting the image.

Some might argue with the squalid depiction of life, but I like the sentiment that books can elevate our worldview and take us out of the mundane crap of day-to-day living. True, that.

On a less serious note: It's a reminder of another reason why physical books still beat e-readers.

Shamelessly lifted news items: Agincourt, The Hobbit, and Styrbiorn

A few news items of interest, lifted shamelessly from other blogs and/or newsgroups I subscribe to:

Bernard Cornwell's Agincourt headed to the big screen. I enjoyed Cornwell's take on this legendary battle from the Hundred Years' War a lot (if you're interested, my full review can be found here at The Cimmerian), if not as much as The Warlord Trilogy or The Saxon Stories. I'm already giddy with the thought of seeing French knights charging English longbowmen and the ensuing slaughter in the mud. And Henry's pre-battle speech, of course.

E.R. Eddison's Styrbiorn the Strong to be reissued. I plucked this bit of news off a new blog I recently added to my roll, Tolkien and Fantasy. Styrbiorn the Strong is a book I've long had on my "to be read list" but haven't yet obtained, as it's been long out of print. This new edition by the author of the incomparable The Worm Ouroboros is due out in August and I'll be purchasing it with glee. How can you go wrong with Eddison's style combined with a rousing viking tale?

Hobbit titles, dates revealed. So we've got the dates--December 14, 2012, and December 13, 2013--and the respective names of the two-part film: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, and The Hobbit: There and Back Again. Sounds promising! The associated news that Orlando Bloom is reprising his role as Legolas is decidedly less so. I actually don't mind this deviation, provided that it's a minor role and doesn't involve Bloom single-handedly slaying Mumakil (or wargs, or the entire Bodyguard of Bolg) at the Battle of Five Armies. This is Beorn's turn to shine, and he had better not be upstaged by an uber-elf.

Entering the Lists in Defense of Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe

There’s a school of thought that views the Middle Ages as a dark gulf between the Classical Age and the rebirth of reason known as the Renaissance. The Middle Ages were, to paraphrase science fiction author David Brin, an unhappy time of small-mindedness and fear, marked by the squabbles of petty nobles, ignorance, superstition, and religious persecution.

Thus, any historical fiction that dares emit a whiff of romanticism of the age is viewed by some as anathema, a whitewashed but corrupted view of “reality”.

But as time marches on and new discoveries and scholarship come to light, we’ve realized that these times weren’t quite as dark and backwards as we once believed. And that allows us to revisit old works of art like Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe with a fresh perspective. My recent re-read of Scott’s 1819 classic of historical fiction reminded me of the following reasons why it’s still relevant and worth re-reading.

To read the rest of this post, visit The Black Gate website.

Celebrating ten years of slaying dragons

This past weekend we celebrated the tenth anniversary of our current D&D group. As anticipated we did something really crazy on our 10th anniversary and ... played a game of D&D!

The hostess prepared an awesome diorama: A green dragon cake on top of a hoard of golden (candy) treasure, surrounded by crumbling columns. You can't see them in this photo but a horde of treasure-hungry heroes advance on the monster. Other nasty creatures stand lurking on the perimeter. There's another dragon in the foreground whose mouth contains the party's halfling thief, Shem.

In the photo below, I strike the killing below, beheading the beast with one swipe of a +3 butter knife. That's me on the left, with Chris, our DM, at right.


Here's to 10 more years of slaying dragons.