Excellent fantasy, perhaps a bit too gory for some
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I purchased this book on the strength of the reviews I read on Amazon. I am not a heavy reader, but like the occasional fantasy novel. I was slowly working my way through David Gemmell's books as I enjoy them a lot. One day my bag for work was so full I couldn't fit in my huge Gemmell book and so took this book with me instead.
My tube got stuck that morning and I ended up reading 70 pages by the time I got to work. I enjoyed the book so much that I was actually disappointed when I reached my station and had to stop reading. This is one of the best books I have ever read and I abandoned my Gemmell book mid way to continue reading this instead.
The book was riveting from the start and very hard to put down. I was a bit disappointed by the battle at the end which seemed a bit abrupt. Perhaps I have been a little spoiled by Gemmell who tends to take half his book per battle :)
Overall still an excellent read, but might not be to everyone's taste it is quite gory (especially near the end) my girlfriend didn't like the "unnecessary" gore and thought it was a bit over the top.
5 Stars, would have been 6 if the ending was a bit better :)
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This IS the original version!
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"Returning reader " is mixing things up. The Fantasy Masterworks edition of the book contains the original text! The edition with an introduction by Lin Carter is the revised text; exactly the opposite of what "Returning reader" claims. Thanks to Fantasy Materworks for bringing us the original, more furious, darker and better version of this wonderful book.
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This IS the original version.
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"Returning reader" is wrong. This IS the original version of the text that was later revised; the version with introduction by Lin Carter is NOT the original - it is the revised one! Thanks to Fantasy Masterworks for bringing us the original and more furious version of this wonderful story.
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Returning reader
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I first read this book in the Sphere print, with the intriduction by Lin Carter, in about 1977, and was blown away by the subject, the pace, the characterisation and the sense of inevitable doom - definitely Tolkien for grown-ups. The version I first read was most certainly not suitable for a 17 year old boy, but I read it with an unhallowed thrill, devouring the lovingly described scenes of extreme violence and amorous activities, and when the book was re-issued, I bought it last year with eager anticipation, hoping to recapture the thrill from when I first read it. Well, I was disappointed, the book may well have been revised by Anderson to make it more readable (a mistake), but it now seems diluted, sanitised, thinned down and bowdlerised to make it suitable for the average 14 year old reader - gone is the sense of savagery, of amoral gods and sprites quite at odds with the normal tinkly-twee image we hold today. Anderson originally described the novel as headlong, prolix, and unrelievedly savage, his take on how he believed the gods and inhabitants of Faerie behaved, and entirely in keeping with what could be read in the sagas.
I enjoyed the original Sphere print, and I still have it, dog-eared, tattered, missing the back cover, but still being read at every opportunity, and I can only state once again my disappointment at this shadow of the original being bruited around as the definitive version of the novel - it's not. 3 stars, and one of those is for the cover illustration
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The lost and found sword
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One afternoon in 1954 I walked into the library to do research for a school report and ended up at the "new aquisitions" bin instead. There I found a slim volume with "sword" in the title, opened it, and still standing by the bin, read it from cover to cover. I then rushed home without taking proper note of title or author, and spent the next ten years trying to identify it. It was only when a fellow-graduate-student took me to a party at Poul's house that I found the book once more, and re-read it with even more delight. THE BROKEN SWORD made an indelible impression. It was the first work I had read which really conveyed what it would be like to live in a culture with a completely different worldview. Anderson's Danish background gave him a real feel for the saga style. Here was a marvelous world of stern Vikings and unearthly elves, gods and trolls, heroic combats and tragic courage. The revised version, which was written after Poul joined the Society for Creative Anachronism, also included some changes in the battle scenes based on his new expertise. Either way, the book was wonderful then, and is just as good a read almost fifty years later.
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