SECOND BOOK SWORDS [Mass Market Paperback]

"The Second Book of Swords" is the second novel in "The Book of Swords" trilogy approximately five years following the prior book. It has an interesting storyline involving an assortment of deities supplemented with a variety of creative magical weaponry.

The book splits time between Ben, Mark, and Baron Doon. I find Mark a more engaging personality and am mildly disappointed Ben dominated the storytelling even though he is a decent character. The enigma of Baron Doon helps build suspense throughout but some of my favorite characters, Sir Andrew and Draffut, make only brief appearances.

An amazing ending, confirming if the swords can destroy a god or goddess, leads to what should be an exciting final novel. I do not care for the mixture of Greek and Roman names for the gods and goddesses, I would prefer to stick with one mythological theme. A detailed map of the significant terrains would have been useful.

I would recommend this series to any fan of the fantasy genre.

Thank you.

Usually the second book in a trilogy - the book to "bridge the gap" - tends to be ... shall we say, not quite up to the par of the first and third books. This is not the case in this instance. In "The Second Book of Swords," five years have passed, and while Barbara has been traveling with a carnival, Ben has chosen to sign up with the Blue Temple for service and Mark has wandered off who-knows-where in his quest to find ways to help fight against the Dark King. Early in the book they all reunite and, with Ben's urging, they decide to try to rob the Blue Temple's treasure hoard, which Ben guarantees has at least one Sword. Along the way they run across another treasure hunter - the Baron Doon - with whom they continue their quest, minus Barbara, who goes her own way.

While The First Book of Swords was a fairly simple plot with flat characters and brisk movement, Saberhagen took more care to building his characters in this text, while at the same time maintaining a fairly tough pace. I was personally pleased by this, as I like to know a bit about the characters in the stories I read. Overall I am pleased with the trilogy so far and have made a note to myself to go and seek the rest of the books set in this world (there are certainly a lot of them!). If you are a fan of the sword and sorcery genre of fantasy (with a bit of a twist), definitely spend the time it will take to find these very fun books.

- SPOILERS EVERYWHERE ALERT -

I remembered this series fondly from years ago, but was a bit disappointed at how slap dash some of the characters and settings felt for a lot of the ride. Then again, that's largely what this particular book is about - the very D & Dish ride through classic `Conan' type situations. I suspect Saberhagen would be fine with that - he probably likes Howard more than Tolkien. He's not quite as blithely lazy as Moorcock can be: I was amused by the way that when a contradiction would come up he wouldn't take the time to rewrite the previous chapters to fix or integrate it, but would throw in a post-script justification (such as - Radulescu's hard to swallow about face, or Barbara "...quickly explained how..." in a couple of sentences she and an entire army happened to turn up unbelievably providentially). He's savvy enough to on a reread realise where readers will go, "As if...", and concerned enough to come up with a usable (sort of) workaround, but planning and rewrites are not his core interests.

You can see that the he built the book around the central idea of a heist - a group working through several levels of security - and the early chapters are mainly the setup. I thought the way he gave Ben the knowledge of the vault was effective, although once `Wayfinder' turned up entirely unnecessary: why did Doon have any use for Ben and Mark? Why did Wayfinder require them: they did nothing essential to help him achieve his goal, and ended up doing the complete opposite.

But sometimes the chaos works well for Saberhagen. I like the way that, for example, Mitspeiler has poured all his craft and years into what turns out to be his dead end son. It's not just the usual calculating that turns many a character into a virtual machine, and makes goodies and baddies sometimes indistinguishable as each action is merely the logical one of achieving greater power. There's even some delightful philosophising:
'..tried m'best. Tried hard, for a hundred years and more. And there he is. There he stands. So why bother? Never become a father, lad. Never become a parent. It's a great ... a great sorcery, that's what. Turns your whole life inside out.'

And that's the real strength of this book. Instead of some vast unopposable destiny or prophecy ultimately driving events, in this universe some of the most momentous, cataclysmic, eon-shaking actions can come from the most petty or chance combination of factors. And it can work in a fantastically believable way. I loved the chaotic tumbling of the last few pages of the book as huge endeavours are so suddenly reduced to nothing, and then - and Saberhagen really pulls this off - there is a massive change out of nowhere.

It's also refreshing that the series structure, unlike so many fantasy series, is not abused here: it's a feature rather than a flaw. While Jordans, Feists and Eddings' milk something well beyond dry, Saberhagen's universe and the central idea of the swords is robust enough to happily entertain many books. They relate to each other, but each is free to either develop the series' central story or to meander off into entirely different self-contained ones.

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