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| The Broken Sword. Poul Anderson. Fantasy |
I'm enjoying "The Broken Sword" by Poul Anderson.
This acclaimed fantasy classic of men, elves, and gods is at once breathtakingly exciting and heartbreakingly tragic.
Published the same year as The Fellowship of the Ring, Poul Anderson’s novel The Broken Sword draws
on similar Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon sources. In his greed for land
and power, Orm the Strong slays the family of a Saxon witch—and for his
sins, the Northman must pay with his newborn son. Stolen by elves and
replaced by a changeling, Skafloc is raised to manhood unaware of his
true heritage and treasured for his ability to handle the iron that the
elven dare not touch. Meanwhile, the being who supplanted him as Orm’s
son grows up angry and embittered by the humanity he has been denied. A
pawn in a witch’s vengeance, the creature Valgard will never know love,
and consumed by rage, he will commit a murderous act of unspeakable
vileness.
It is their destiny to finally meet on the field of
battle—the man-elf and his dark twin, the monster—when the
long-simmering war between elves and trolls finally erupts with a
devastating fury. And only the mighty sword Tyrfing, broken by Thor and
presented to Skafloc in infancy, can turn the tide in a terrible
clashing of faerie folk that will ultimately determine the fate of the
old gods.
Along with such notables as Isaac Asimov and Ray
Bradbury, multiple Hugo and Nebula Award winner Poul Anderson is
considered one of the masters of speculative fiction.