The Sword Is Forged
{{short description|1983 novel by Evangeline Walton}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=March 2025}}
{{Infobox book
| name = The Sword Is Forged
| image = Sword Is Forged (1983).jpg
| caption = First edition cover
| author = Evangeline Walton
| cover_artist = Rowena Morrill
| country = United States
| language = English
| series =
| genre = Historical fiction
| publisher = Timescape Books
| release_date = 1983
| media_type = Print (hardcover & paperback)
| pages = 347
| isbn = 0-671-46490-6
| preceded_by =
| followed_by =
}}
The Sword Is Forged is a 1983 historical fiction novel by Evangeline Walton. It is based on the story of Theseus and the Amazon queen Antiope from Greek mythology.
Plot
The Amazon queen Antiope is captured by Theseus and brought back to Athens to become his bride. They fall in love and she bears him a son, Hippolytus, but soon the Amazons besiege Athens to reclaim their queen.
Characters
Development and publication
According to Douglas A. Anderson, Walton wrote a trilogy of novels about Theseus in the mid-1940s.{{cite web |url=https://www.sfsite.com/fsf/blog/2011/11/22/douglas-a-anderson-on-evangeline-walton/ |title=Interview: Douglas A. Anderson on Evangeline Walton |work=SF Site |date=November 22, 2011 |access-date=March 16, 2016}} She completely rewrote all three books in the mid-1950s, but put them aside when Mary Renault published her own Theseus novels, The King Must Die (1958) and later The Bull from the Sea (1962).{{cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UJhMCgAAQBAJ&q=The+Sword+is+Forged+by+Evangeline+Walton&pg=PT146 |title=The Evolution of Modern Fantasy: From Antiquarianism to the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series |first=Jamie |last=Williamson |date=2015 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |access-date=March 16, 2016 |isbn=978-1-137-51579-7}} After the success of the Ballantine editions of her Mabinogion tetralogy in the 1970s, Walton visited Greece and started reworking her own Theseus trilogy. The first volume was published as The Sword Is Forged in 1983. Walton died in 1996, and the other two installments remain unpublished.{{cite book |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jUv5gVgSNvYC&q=The+Sword+is+Forged+by+Evangeline+Walton&pg=PA368 |title=Encyclopedia of Fantasy and Horror Fiction |chapter=Walton, Evangeline |page=368 |first=Don |last=D'Ammassa |date=2006 |publisher=Facts on File |isbn=0-8160-6192-0}}
Themes
In The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, John Clute and John Grant cite The Sword Is Forged as an example of the use of the Amazon in sword and sorcery as "an icon of female autonomy".{{cite book |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mfjAjibERF0C&q=The+Sword+is+Forged+by+Evangeline+Walton&pg=PA23 |title=The Encyclopedia of Fantasy |chapter=Amazons |page=23 |editor1-first=John |editor1-last=Clute |editor2-first=John |editor2-last=Grant |publisher=St. Martin's Griffin |date=February 1999 |isbn=0-312-19869-8}} They go on to explain that novel uses Theseus to present "a patriarchal challenge to the Amazon in terms which allow some inspired debate". Kirkus Reviews suggests that the takeaway theme of the novel is that "love 'must always mean bondage' for women".{{cite web |url=https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/evangeline-walton/the-sword-is-forged/ |title=The Sword Is Forged by Evangeline Walton |work=Kirkus Reviews |date=1983 |access-date=March 16, 2016}}
Reception
Kirkus Reviews called The Sword Is Forged "an earnest, hard-working, but spindly reconstruction" of the Theseus myth, noting that "Antiope has a certain pep in the first half here ... But the Amazons emerge as a kind of terrorist branch of NOW, and Antiope's decline into All-for-Love milque-toastery is truly tedious." Don D'Ammassa wrote in his Encyclopedia of Fantasy and Horror Fiction that the novel is "an entertaining story but fails to measure up to [Walton's] Welsh stories".
Mary Renault described The Sword Is Forged as "a keen exploration of Greek myth", and Poul Anderson wrote that Walton's "scholarship and realistic detail never get in the way of an exciting and moving story."{{cite book |title=The Sword Is Forged |first=Evangeline |last=Walton |author-link=Evangeline Walton |date=1983 |publisher=Timescape Books |chapter=Back cover |isbn=0-671-46490-6 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/swordisforged00walt }} Praising Walton's combination of feminism and romantic love, Fritz Leiber called the novel "the best fictional depiction of the Amazons that I've ever encountered".
The novel was nominated for a 1984 Locus Award, but lost to The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley.{{cite web |url=http://www.tor.com/2011/05/22/hugo-nominees-1984/ |title=Hugo Nominees: 1984 |work=Tor.com |first=Jo |last=Walton |author-link=Jo Walton |date=May 22, 2011 |access-date=March 16, 2016}} Bradley had previously called Walton's novel "a book of wonderful humanity and great classic force."
References
{{Reflist}}
External links
- {{ISFDB title|id=1069|title=The Sword Is Forged}}
- [https://evangelinewalton.wordpress.com Evangeline Walton official website]
{{Evangeline Walton}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sword Is Forged, The}}
Category:Cultural depictions of Theseus
Category:Classical mythology in popular culture
Category:Novels by Evangeline Walton