The Blue Sword

"Robin McKinley is one of the first authors who introduced me to women kicking butts, which started me on this questionable path of wanting to solve problems with violence. I’ve never stopped loving this trope of the woman with a sword in her hand. The Blue Sword is a secondary world fantasy. It takes place not on earth but in a different place with some overlap of certain experiences and ideas. Its prequel is The Hero and the Crown , in which the protagonist, Aerin, teaches herself how to fight a giant dragon and then does it. The two books take place centuries apart, and the prequel is the ancient history of The Blue Sword . The main characters in The Blue Sword are Angharad ‘Harry’ Crewe and King Corlath. Harry is part of the colonizer culture. Because she is orphaned and has no money and nowhere to live, she’s sent to live at a desert outpost in another country to be near her soldier brother. Corlath is the king of the Hillfolk, who are native to this area. Supposedly he has very powerful magic, but Harry’s people don’t believe it. Corlath’s magic tells him that he needs to kidnap Harry, so he does, and she is once again displaced from her home. Now she’s stuck with these desert nomads who have no idea why she has been kidnapped by their king, because he himself doesn’t know. He only knows that it’s important because the magic said so. This is a ‘fish out of water’ story. Harry has to learn the language and the customs. She learns to sword fight and to ride horses the way that the Hillfolk ride. They don’t use bridles and bits. Side note: I’ve never been a horse girl. Horses alarm me. Whenever I have the opportunity to have somebody in one of my stories ride a horse, I simply have them walk. Even if I have to ride a horse in a video game, I’ll think, ‘Do I actually have to ride this horse or could I simply not?’ I respect horse girls, but I have never been one. Harry discovers she has magic skills, and she rises in the ranks of these Hillfolk. Ultimately, she does prove herself and she joins the battle that is forming against the demonic northern tribes that Corlath rightly believes are preparing to invade. This threatens to harm not only him and his people, but also Harry’s people, their outposts, and everything they’re trying to accomplish. Here we have another romance where the woman starts out at a disadvantage. She is a random nobody from across the sea who has lived as a woman does in that society. I want to say it’s about Regency or Victorian level: she walks around in a dress, reads books, and drinks tea. We don’t have the sense that women are on an equal footing with men in this culture, but neither are we given the impression that they’re oppressed or that there are strong misogynistic tendencies. Nevertheless, once she gets into this other group, she finds herself at a huge disadvantage that she has to work to correct. It’s extremely difficult for her, but she works hard and gains the respect of the people. She literally fights her way to the top of the ranks to prove that she can hold her own and be at the king’s side. There still is that power differential, in that she’s a penniless orphan and he’s a king, but she earns her place through her own actions and her own efforts. By the end of the novel, they are equals because she has come into her own, in terms of both her magical powers and her combat skills. She ends up serving as the bridge between the two cultures. It’s a mostly peaceful resolution to a colonizer dynamic that, in itself, can be extremely bad and wrong in a lot of different stories. This is a book that started me on a specific path in terms of my preferences. In many romance novels, even if the woman starts out with a sword in her hand, all too often, by the end, she is overshadowed by her love interest, not only in terms of strength and skill, but in that he may be protective and overbearing to the point where she stops sword fighting and just lets herself be protected. No judgment on that dynamic. That structure, as romance goes, can be hot and satisfying, but it’s not for me. My power fantasy definitely involves strong women taking charge, kicking butts, and getting things done. Those are the stories I gravitate towards, and The Blue Sword is definitely one of them."