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| The Sword of the Lady |
So, the continuing saga of characters in a world where electricity, steam powder, and explosive chemical reactions don’t work. The Sword of the Lady is the sixth book in this series, and the third to feature the second generation of people living after the radical change in physics that resulted in the end of civilization as we know it. The first trilogy, about the first generation, was much more rooted in survival and politics. In the second trilogy, fantasy starts to creep in. Rudi and Co., the forces of Good, etc. are still chasing after a prophesied sword that will allegedly help them defeat an overwhelming and terrifying enemy. Like the previous book, though, most of this book describes Rudi and his companions trip across what used to be the United States. Which I think is the best part of the series, because you get to see the little nations that have sprung up in the twenty-odd years since the event.
We pick up the story in the former state of Iowa, now a provisional republic. After returning a cartload of salvaged artwork, Rudi and his group head northeast to Wisconsin. As they travel, they fend off attacks and plots by agents of a separatist cult that’s set up show in Montana and eastern Idaho. I will say one thing for Stirling, he’s great at creating monolithic and frightening enemies that you think would be unbeatable. When we get glimpses of what’s happening back in Rudi’s homeland, things just look bleaker and bleaker. The enemy outnumber Rudi’s family and their allies, and they’re using otherworldly weapons to cheat. On the one hand, you want Rudi to linger so that you can learn more about customs and things and on the other, you want him to get his pigsticker and hightail it back to Oregon to lend a hand.
I think my favorite part of this book is when Rudi and his gang stumble upon a tribe of Neo-Norse in what was formerly Maine. This tribe has another dose of founder’s effect and has taken on the beliefs and ideas of the people who kept them from starving during the Change. (I’m pretty sure there’s a term for this, but I’ve forgotten what it is.) And since a significant chunk of my own family comes from Scandinavia, it was good to see people going a-viking again.
There’s another book planned for this, with a duology to follow (according to Wikipedia), but there’s so much to get through that I don’t know how Stirling is going to wrap it all up. I mean, it took two books to get from one coast to another. How is he going to get back and kick some bad guy tuchus in one book?
People who know my reading habits know that I like to watch things fall apart in fiction, but I also like to see how things put themselves back together again. In this installment of the series, a lot of the older characters remark that the younger generations think differently than they do. One of them put it well when he said that rather than trying to live up to legends, the younger generation are actually living them out again. (I can’t find the exact quote, otherwise I’d put in a page number here.) But it is rather amazing to see people taking the trappings of ideas and beliefs and use them to cobble people together into communities and then to see the younger generation actually believing it all. The older generation remark that they’re more reflective, that they think more about thinking (another phrase I can’t source from the book), but they forget to mention that they’re a lot more cynical than the younger people. They profess to believe, but they don’t really. It’s an interesting sociological experiment, to say the least.
The downside–apart from some typographical errors–is that I have to wait another year to see what happens next. Nuts.