Gareth Hanrahan
Orbit, 4 May 2023
Available as: PB, 551pp, audio, e
Source: Advance copy & audio subscription
ISBN(PB): 9780356516530
The Sword Defiant is a gritty fantasy novel that takes a wonderfully fresh approach to the Quest Against the Dark Lord.
You know the one - a powerful wielder of magic stretches out his withered arm over the land, threatening all.
The Strong don't recognise the threat, or are diverted by their rivalries, so it falls to a band of lowly adventurers to bring down the evil through their endurance, mutual loyalty, courage and guile.
Once they do this, the evil vanquished, all can live in peace and freedom.
Well, not here. Hanging his story off a stray line of Tolkien - in which, if I recall correctly, JRRT was rather testily pointing out that Lord of the Rings was not an allegory of WWII: if it had been, the Ring would have been used "and Barad-dûr would not have been destroyed but occupied"- this book doesn't focus on the Quest - though there are flashbacks and we hear some of the legends, ridiculously embellished, recounted - but on the aftermath.
Twenty years after the Nine defeated Lord Bone, his city of Necrad is occupied by the League (Elves, Dwarves and Men in uneasy alliance) but also still inhabited by Witch Elves, Wraiths, Vatlings and other servants of Lord Bone - many of them resentful and nostalgic for the good old days. Rather than Bone's sorcery having been destroyed, magical secrets are hoarded by the League, and so also openly (though illegally) traded.
The Nine have fared variously. Magician Blaise has taken Bone's tower and studies his secrets. Thief Berys runs her own smuggling racket. Aelfric (Alf), the swordsman, stays in Necrad to fight the horrors living in the pits below it until, numbed by the horrors he saw there, he drifts off into the wilderness, carrying Bone's sword, a thing of evil which whispers to him incessantly.
The story gets moving when Alf's nephew, Derwyn, discovers who his uncle - the hero told of in countless legends and songs - was, and sets out to find him, trailed by his mother Olva, Alf''s sister, and her dog Cu. So, we have an Unexpected Journey here, and Hanrahan drops a number of other knowing Middle-Earth references which made me smile - allusions to a foreign country where the stars are strange, for example, and a frustrated dwarf who wonders if the lore she seeks may appear in lettering only visible by moonlight (though, Torun asks herself, what would be the point of that?)
More seriously, there clearly is a threat brewing but it's not yet clear what. And the team that won through twenty years ago is not what it was - fractured by rivalries, weariness and the temptations of peace. We're seeing things from wildly different perspectives - those of the world-weary Alf, the inexperienced but shrewd Olva and the star-struck Derwyn. It's possible they are all missing the point, somewhat, but the variety of outlooks allows Hanrahan a nuance of approach here which acknowledges that, well, the world just isn't simple. There isn't a single enemy at least not yet, and the fallout of the previous conflict has left a more or less colonial situation in the North where the oppressed Wilder are being driven off their land while the Witch Elves are sullenly resentful of their subjugation. I mean it as praise, but this is really a book where social policy and political compromise matter - especially if renewed war is to be averted.
But in a world where the earlier may have taken its toll, but is remembered rather in glorious in songs and stories, the easiest approach may always seem to be the sword with eager young knights ready to take up their weapons and earn their own songs. (In fact some of them are rather underwhelmed when they finally meet Alf - he's definitely not the Hero they expected).
It is a complex, subtle and morally chewy story which addresses head on a range of issues often - for perfectly good reasons - left out of classic fantasy, and Hanrahan really delivers on the concept, creating a believable and liveable world.
I'm eager what the next book - Lands of the Firstborn - has in store!
For more information about The Sword Defiant, see the publisher's website here.
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