Customer Reviews

The Swordbearer

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

At the start of this book, one can get the impression that this is going to be a typical 'great-hearted boy warrior finds powerful magic sword and exacts glorious revenge/justice upon those who fiendishly slew his family' sort of story. It is not.

Before too long, the plotline begins to skew wildly around. In typical Glen Cook fashion, the story is gritty with believable characters that are not all good or bad. The pace and the writing is crisp and to the point. Finally, the story itself is fascinating and sometimes disturbing, but it always draws the reader along only to leave him hanging a bit at the end.

Cook is an excellent author, and one of the most underrated fantasy writers out there. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who likes the rougher side of fantasy.

Having purchased and enjoyed the entirety of Glen Cook's "Black Company" novels, I decided to look at some of his earlier works. "The Swordbearer" was the first of these, and proved to be a revelation into the evolution of a writer.

The story itself is stock - a boy finds a relic of times past and, upon doing so, becomes a player/pawn in an ever-continuing ancient game between supernatural powers. The human elements of the story are underdeveloped so that, when combined with a fairly quickly moving plot, leaves the reader trying to figure out what's going on more than absorbing whatever intended emotional impact there might be.

Overall, I would recommend the book to any Glen Cook fan and especially any fan of the "Black Company" series. Contained within "The Swordbearer" are many of the story elements and themes that Cook would later incorporate and improve upon in his "Black Company" novels. Among them are the concepts of soul-stealing, omniscient ability contained by a charcter via a special power or machine, and Cook's two biggest trademarks - a world of grey characters with little black or white, and an uncanny ability to create compelling and lavishly detailed battle sequences. "The Swordbearer" plot is driven by a number of pivotal battle sequences and it is during these moments that the book is at its strongest.

At its best, "The Swordbearer" is worth reading for any Cook fan who wants to see many "Black Company" staples take shape, and a good book for anyone looking for a light read. Although "The Swordbearer" is uneven throughout, its parts make up for the whole and make it a reasonable purchase for the curious or voracious fantasy reader.

In a world where day to day lives are destroyed by ancient magics come from dead cities, alongs comes a crippled boy wielding the Sword of Heroes to avenge his family. But, who is right? Who is wrong? What dark purpose drives the sword and the cruel dwarf that follows the Bearer? I first picked this book up at a Flea Market almost 20 years ago. It was a hardcover the size of most paperbacks of the time and I loved it! It is a classic tale of sword and sorcery written at a time when the classics were virtually unknown themselves. I always wondered when Mr. Cook would continue the story. I still wonder.

"The Swordbearer" was the first book I ever read written by Glen Cook and I enjoyed it so much I afterwards read all his works I could get my hands on (though not so easy to do in Japan until recently). It is very easy to identify with the main character of the book Garion, and the world swirls so much with powerful magical artifacts, buried sorcery, intriguing characters , roving battles,duels its hard to imagine that all of it fit in one book.The tone of the book is also good; not the cotton candy world of some inferior SF, but you feel a gritty substance to it, the light and the dark--I don't know how to express this well.Anyway I definitely recommend this for those who want a good substantial fantasy read.

This book is a unique, older novel that at first may appear cliched, but when you realize when it was written, you come to see how this work was done pre-Brooks and the Sword of Shannara, and a number of other "intelligent sword" works. This is a very satisfying read - while not challenging you thinking of how the world works, there are few books I would rather re-read more with a glass of Coke and a hammock than this one.

some spoilers follow.

This book, in the first 50 pages, convinced me I was reading yet another magic evil sword (very like Stormbringer) book combined with heroic fantasy (boy wants to become hero, boy finds hero's sword after family killed by big evil bad guys). Almost from the time Gathrid find the sword you realize that this book is something entirely else, and a very worth effort on the part of Cook.

the book contains a lot of the political intrigue and complexity of many of his books, and there are no black and whites, no matter what is implied early on. I won't spoil details.

Great book, he could have written more here.

I have read the Swordbearer twice. The first time was about 16 years ago when I borrowed it from a friend, then recently my husband purchased the book and I just finished reading it again. I love the story--how an innocent boy dreams of becoming a great warrior, then becomes one with the help of an enchanted sword and a dwarf, and discovers that war is not as glorious as the history books make it out to be. My only wish is that Glen Cook would have written a sequel so that we would know how Gathrid's and Rogala's pursuit of Nieroda ended.

As the sword had been lost for ages, so had the title and author of this book been lost to me. After exhausting every Tolkien and CS Lewis book I could find, I was lucky to have purchased a new release of THE SWORDBEARER almost 20 years ago. I'm looking forward to reading this work again through adult eyes, as I can still remember the excitement it created as a thirteen year old. I'll make sure to keep this copy in a safe place, so my sons may have the same experience in a few years. I can't wait to catch up on Cook's other books.

Gathrid of Kacalief is ejected from his sheltered childhood by the Mindak Ahlert and, while fleeing from the Mindak's evil golem-like "Toal", stumbles across the Sword of Suchara and the Sword's protector, and the Swordbearer's esquire, Theis Rogala. Grasping the sword, Gathrid learns that he is bound to follow the compulsions of the Sword's mysterious fashioner. With the aid, advice and assistance of Rogala - who Gathrid knows from legend will eventually relieve him of the office of Swordbearer - Gathrid rockets from land to land, being accepted as a dangerous allies by the Western forces opposed to the Mindak's invasion and by the Mindak in turn, as alliances shift, politics become Byzantine, and the yesterday's enemy is today's threat.

"The Swordbearer" is "minor" Cook. It doesn't rank with his better writings, such as the early Dark Company, the early Garrett and the Starfishers trilogy, and with stand-alone books like "The Dragon Never Sleeps" but it is worth reading for anyone who likes Cook, as well as for anyone who wants gritty, intelligent and deep stories. Cook excels at introducing politics into his fantasy as he shows how alliances can be fragile and based on the personality of leaders.

Cook also has an obvious love of history. Gathrid's world is one which is burdened by an unimaginable depth of history, where the big events of the distant past are no longer remembered but are still playing themselves out in his present.

On the other hand, I thought that The Swordbearer didn't show some of the things I typically expect from Cook. Cook normally has a felicity for naming things. This is absent from The Swordbearer where things received gutteral sounding names - Daubendiek, the Mindak, Ventimiglia, Wistma Povich of Spellenkothen - which hurt the flow of the story and simply sounded "made up." Also, while Gathrid becomes quite amazing by the end of the story when he lives up to the Swordbearer's potential, in the early parts of the story he comes across as a "punk" which doesn't make for an engaging focus character for the early part of the book.

Nonetheless, this is the second time I've read The Swordbearer. The first time was in the '80s, and I recall enjoying it. This time, I knocked it off over the course of a few days as bed time diversion during a trial, and it served its purpose of drawing me into Gathrid's world and making me forget mine for a little while. You can't ask for much more from a work of fantasy fiction.

While this story is a near carbon-copy of others in the genre, it remains an embarrassingly delicious aperitif to Cook's later, more original, works.