By the Sword by Mercedes Lackey

Title: By the Sword (Stand Alone, Kerowyn's Tale)

Author: Mercedes Lackey (American, 1950- )
Originally published: 1991
Page count: 482

Dates read: 3/7/23-3/18/23

2023 book goal progress: 5 out of 23

Author Challenge: Mercedes Lackey

Read my other Valdemar book reviews.

Read my other book reviews for my 2023 goals HERE.


Description on back of book:

Granddaughter of the sorceress Kethry, daughter of a noble house, Kerowyn had been forced to run the family keep since her mother’s untimely death. Yet now at last her brother was preparing to wed, and when his bride became the lady of the keep, Kerowyn could return to her true enjoyments—training horses and hunting.

But all Kerowyn’s hopes and plans were shattered when her ancestral home was attacked, her father slain, her brother wounded, and his fiancée kidnapped. Drive by desperation and the knowledge that a sorcerer had led the attack, Kerowyn sought her grandmother Kethry’s aid, a journey which would prove but the first step on the road to the fulfillment of her destiny.

First sentence:
"Blessed - look out!"

Favorite quotes:
"If every man doesn't want the same thing, then why should every woman want the same thing? We're not cookies, you know, all cut of identical dough and baked to an identical brown and sprinkled with sugar so you men can devour us whenever you please."

" 'I can't offend them - by "them" I assume you mean the men - by competing with them. You want me to give up everything I've worked for all this time, and even my recreations.'

Doesn't it just figure, she thought angrily, that when I finally get to the point of reacting like a professional fighter, he pulls this on me? Offering me anything I want - as long as I don't do anything that embarrasses him. Like act like a human being capable of thinking for herself."

"If there's one thing I can't stand besides maps, it's a holy war. These religious fanatics are so damned - unprofessional. Messy, that was what it was. Seems like the moment religion enters into a question, people's brains turn to mush. Messy wars and messy thinking. Messy thinking causing messy wars."

"That word again. That stupid, suicidal word. Honor won't pay for much of anything. More stupid wars have been fought over honor than I care to think about. Seems to me that honor is a word that gets used to cover a lot of other things. Things like greed and ambition, hatred, and bigotry."

CAWPILE Rating: Overall - 6.6/10 - ⭐⭐⭐/5
Characters      - 8
Atmosphere   - 7
Writing Style - 8
Plot                - 7
Intrigue          - 6
Logic             - 3
Enjoyment     - 7
What is a CAWPILE Rating?

Review:

I have mixed feelings about this book. It is good overall, but it had a pretty slow start. It is incredibly feminist - to a fault. The 'sword' referred to in the title is a magical sword called Need. It will only be wielded by a woman against a man. Even when another female is directly attacking the female wielder of the sword, it won't let the wielder harm the other female - putting the wielder herself in grave danger. There were other things that I had an issue with regarding this book's view of feminism, but I'm not going to go into details here.

The story is mostly set in Rethwellen, not Valdemar. We briefly meet a Herald in the middle of the book, but they don't really come into play until the very end - which is a disappointment. Heralds have a very strong moral/honor code, which seemed to be broken without any thought in this book. For years, a Herald goes into a person's dreams to be with them while they're apart... but the other person doesn't know it's a dream. To me, a Herald would NEVER enter into a person's dream without express permission to do so beforehand or at least tell the person right away in the dream what the situation is. They have sexual encounters and she tells him much more than she probably would have if she knew it was real. It just felt like a rape of the mind to me and it did NOT fit in with the behavior of a Herald. This, more than anything else, is the reason why the book rating is so low for me.

Most of the book takes place before the original Arrows Trilogy, then it jumps ahead and the ending is after the Arrows Trilogy. Despite most of it being pre-Arrows, I would suggest reading it after the trilogy due to spoilers in the ending. I enjoy Kerowyn as a character. I cried multiple times reading the last chapter. The ending is great!

Now I'm off to read another book... but since a review should be more about the author of the book than about the writer of the blog, I will let Mercedes Lackey have the last words:

These are sayings/teachings from Tarma, Kerowyn's teacher.

"No learning, no knowledge is ever wasted."

"If there was one thing that studying under Tarma had taught her, it was never to discard a book. You never knew when something in it - even in so innocuous a volume as a book of poetry - could prove useful."

"A slighted friend is more dangerous than an enemy."