Malinda Lo

This week at The Enchanted Inkpot, we are discussing our book of the month: The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley, which just happens to be one of my favorite books of all time (and I am not exaggerating!).

The Blue Sword begins when young Angharad Crewe, who prefers the nickname Harry, journeys from her Homeland (the name of her home country) to the far-off land that Homelanders know as Daria. Homelanders have colonized much of Daria — except for the kingdom of Damar, sheltered by the nearby Hills where few if any Homelanders have ever been.

When Harry arrives in Daria, Damar is bracing for war with the Northerners, a group of people who resemble demons more than humans. The king of Damar, Corlath, visits the outpost where Harry is staying to warn the Homelanders of the impending invasion, but when they choose to not believe him (Homelanders know nothing of kelar, or the magic that runs through many Damarians), he departs in anger. His kelar, however, insists that he return to the outpost to take Harry along with him.

And so, under the cover of night and Corlath’s kelar, he goes to the house where Harry is staying and takes her from the windowseat where she has been sitting, restless and unable to sleep. Thus begins Harry’s adventure: She wakes up to find herself slung over a horse, riding through the desert.

Over the next several weeks she learns to speak the language of Damar; she drinks their Water of Sight and sees herself lifting a blue sword in battle; she is given a teacher and a horse and sent into the Hills to learn the art of war. And she realizes that she is gifted with kelar of her own — which will come in very handy when she faces the Northerners in battle.

First published in 1982, The Blue Sword was awarded the Newbery Honor despite its featuring a protagonist who is certainly an adult. Newbery Award and Honor books these days tend to focus on books with children as main characters. I’m not sure if it would have qualified for the Newbery today, but I’m glad it did back then. Even though I was only 11 or 12 when I first read it, I liked the fact that Harry was older than me and was having adult adventures. I think that the YA genre is now much more clearly defined in terms of the age of its protagonists, though McKinley continues to publish books in the YA genre with characters who are clearly adults. I think she may be one of the few authors who are still able to do this.

When I recently re-read the book, I was struck by the fact that the romance between Harry and Corlath is extremely subtle. Although it becomes clear at the end of the book, their developing love for each other is rarely if ever overtly mentioned. This makes The Blue Sword quite different from much of the young adult fantasy being published today, which often features a clear, potentially dramatic romance between two teens. In addition, Corlath is several years older than Harry — I’d guess at least a decade. This doesn’t bother me at all in The Blue Sword, but again, this is not common in today’s YA. (I admit, I prefer McKinley’s approach to writing romance!)

But while McKinley may have a hands-off approach to writing about romantic relationships, she is particularly detailed when it comes to describing place. Because Harry enters Damar as a foreigner, we get to experience this new culture just as she does. This allows us to learn new terms and words as if they were merely a new language — like French or Spanish — and creates quite a sense of place. One could imagine that Damar really does exist, with its particular cultural traditions and rituals.

In many ways, I think The Blue Sword is not like today’s young adult fantasy. The style in which McKinley writes, with her long, rhythmic sentences; the lack of drama in the romantic relationship, which is only a subplot rather than the main story — and yet I believe that The Blue Sword delivers a message of female empowerment much more successfully than many YA books published today.

Stop by The Enchanted Inkpot for more discussion of this book!