If I was rating this purely on my childhood joy, it would be five stars. And today it is still for the most part extremely enjoyable to read, except for the fact that in its joyous feminism it accepts colonialism whole-heartedly.

This is a rewrite of the extremely offensive rape-romance The Sheik and in a way that is very satisfying; our heroine, Harry, is kidnapped by the desert king, and then instead of raping her until she develops Stockholm Syndrome and decides she's in love with him, he treats her with respect and honour and she becomes a powerful warrior and they fall into companionate love and by the end she is queen of the country, mother to many children, feted and respected by all. As a child this was immensely satisfying; she has no home and no family and is bored and restless and wants adventure, and then adventure comes and she triumphs over it and wins everything.

And yet, and yet, reading it as an adult, I could not help but shudder a little at the end. I am aware of the notion of the white saviour and have heard this book criticised on that angle, and yes, I see the problems there, but it does not hit me viscerally. What does, though, is how it suggests that the faux-British colonial project happening here is in some way a relationship of potential respect, that all it takes is Harry becoming queen of the subjugated people to open meaningful diplomatic relationships between, that somehow if only the right individual person talks to the colonisers suddenly everything will be okay. Which, as I write it out, is really just another (perhaps more subtle) version of the white saviour -- she does not just save them by being a fated military leader with supernatural fighting skills, but also by being so amazing in all ways that an entire government decides to treat an entire other nation as human beings. I think I would find this distasteful even if she were not an outsider coming in to another culture to save it, because I do not like the Great Man theory in which it is just finding the right 'Good' person and suddenly evil institutions quit being evil. But then, McKinley's colonialism is entirely harmless -- we never see any of the subjugated peoples actually suffering in any way, it is all charming and amusing and look, we get oranges every day!

I am sad, because I loved it so much as a child, but I am not sure I will be able to read it again.

To set the stage for my review, let me digress, and tell a bit about myself. I was born blind, and got books from the library for the blind. Ours was, to say the least, a dump. I'd order books, maybe get what I wanted, never got any help. I read LOTR when I was eight. Then, at around 10, this book came along. I loved it, and wanted to read more books of this nautre. It wasn't until I was 17 that I learned that style was fantasy. So, as one might judge, this book has a soft spot in my heart. So, I'll try to limit my feelings to this kurrent reading of the book, but know that it has a warm place in my heart.

Mckinly has always had this ability to create awesome female protagonists who are kind of the shutout, the nonmale version of the large breasted barbarian princess. Going through hard times, they emerge, victorious at the end.

The Blue sword follows this patern. Harry moves from the homelander main core to the provances, the backwater. Strangly, she's drawn to the wild desert, and it's mysteries. Kidnapped, we feel for her, and watch her grow as a person, and strong woman.

Now we hit a nasty problem in our story. Thanks to magic, and blood, she wins the day, saves the world, and wins the king. It's a plot device that's been used millions of times. I'll give Mckinley a bit of slack. She wrote this in 1982, before the glut of fantasy came on the jmarket. Still, ending was just a bit too contrived. There's excitment, heroism, the faceles evil northern hords, but, magic was used, and the day was won. This was the big grype that many sf authors had about fantasy. Wave a wand, and everything is solved.

I read a review that made the northens scarey and bad. I just found them to be another faceless characterless army.

All that said, it's a good introduction to fantasy, moves along well, and is a satisfying read, even after all this time. It prooves that one need not write a doorstop novel to have it be a piece of effective storytelling.

At the end, the book isn't so much about the war, or how she gains her power, but how this tall wild girl grows into a place, a time, and a crown. We all love a fairytale ending from time to time.

I really should clean up my thoughts on this books, but I won't. It's almost like a back and forth argument with myself over the book's proes and cons.

It doesn't matter how often I have read this, it's a massive fave of mine.

Probably my favorite book. This is coming with me to my desert island.

Even though I prefer the previous novel, I have to say that THE BLUE SWORD was a damn good read. The writing is still fluid, direct and clear; the characters are still interesting; the plot straightforward, yet engaging. I was fascinated to come across another girl's journey, and while it was definitely different from Aerin's, that wasn't a bad thing. It was a slow start, but definitely picked up and I quite enjoyed it!

I have read this many times and love it the same each and every time. Excellent for lovers of fantasy.

2.5 Stars, but I rounded up because of the world building.

This is a story about a girl named Harry who goes to stay with a nice childless couple in a desert after the death of her father. Her brother is stationed at the little outpost there, and unlike most of the people, Harry finds that she really loves the desert. After hearing some rumors about the people who live in the Hills being magical, Harry chances across their king one day and everything changes. She is taken by the king and becomes one of the Free Hillfolk by choice. She goes to battle against their enemies and in doing so becomes legendary.

I so wish I could say I loved this book, but it was pretty hard for me to get through. I felt that the entire story was written in a very shallow way, and that if only I could dust off the glass I could see the real story underneath. There are a few POV issues as well, and it's not even consistent switches. Sometimes it would be just a sentence or so, and other times it would be a few pages. There was no change in fonts between when a character was thinking or talking, the names of the horses switched randomly between their Hill name and Outlander names, and the relationships were never given any depth. In fact, one such set of relationships grew from a smile and then was suddenly BFFs on a mission. I wanted so much more from this than I got, and I just feel let down. I wonder if I had read this as a young girl if I would feel differently, and I think I would since the story itself has a great premise, but at this point in my reading life I want to feel every grain of sand that stung her face, and every moment that she felt tension for her King, or her battle. Instead I found myself re-reading sentences, or paragraphs, throughout the entire story as well as forgetting some of the characters.

A good part for me were the relationships with the animals! Harry has a big cat that sleeps with her and a stunning horse. The world building was good and very descriptive (couldn't she have kept that up with the characters?!) and some of the magic was really interesting, but so under explored that it's a negative as well as a positive. There was a satisfactory wrap up (it wasn't an epilogue, but read like one) and that made me happy even as I thought it could have been deeper. I wouldn't personally recommend this, but I also wouldn't say that this is a bad story. Just not my style or taste.

“There never was a choice. I ride the only way open to me, and yet often and again it seems to me I am dangerously unfit for it.”

A penniless orphan of average beauty (it starts like a bad romance, no? WAIT FOR IT) called Harry (I DARE you not to think about Prince Harry’s bearded face now!) is forced to leave her home in the England Homeland empire and accept hospitality of strangers in Damaria, a desert land recently colonised but still inhabited by mysterious nomad Hillfolk.

The opening chapter reminded me of Guns of the Dawn and I thought that that a very good sign indeed. I was wrong. The Blue Sword is a tale about a girl who mastered a language in three days, horsemanship in a week and fighting skills in little over a month. And then she got a magic sword so she could save the world.

Harry is outwardly unprepossessing, well-bred young lady finding her place on the lower branches of a gentry tree in a Victorian-like society but inwardly she is an unquiet spirit, yearning for an adventure. In a properly British Homelandish manner, she finds herself intrigued by the savage locals and their barbarian yet, oh how sophisticated ways. Especially the gift of magic (kelar) fascinates her.

Now, the Hillfolk have their own problems. In the first place the gift wanes, their land has been colonised, and now a mortal enemy threatens to annihilate them. When the British Homelanders refuse to get involved in someone else's war help, the King of the Hillfolk, under the impulse of his own magic, decides to abduct Harry.

Cliches ensue.

1. A king whose diplomatic skill amount to a) being kingly, b) riding a red horse, c) having a fancy tent, and d) throwing a tantrum in the face of a potential ally when they are unimpressed by general threats and ominous foretelling. Impressive, no? We deal with a leader of people that have been conquered, by a benign power but nonetheless. And what doe this king do? He keeps his people separated not because the Homelanders are an oppressive force but because he fears a change most of all (He says: “They would send doctors and farmers and seeds and plows and bricklayers, and within a generation his people would be as faceless as the rest of the Outlander Darians.”). In other words, his faith in the strength and vitality of his own culture and traditions is next to nil and so he’d rather perish than civilise.

2. If you wonder why would an average charity case and a new arrival to the country be worth of breaking the law and potentially causing a conflict with a superior force, let me assure you that the answer is obvious: *TRIGGER WARNING* special snowflake!

3. Harry has a special cat and a special horse. A couple of days and she is able to use present perfect and conditionals also subordinate clauses in a new language, after three days she communicates fluently, after a week she is able to discern semantic nuances. (There is also another language she just speaks due to her magic powers). FOR THE RECORD, I have been living in the Czech Republic for half a year and I still am a source of mild bemusement for all my Czech speaking colleagues. Last week I confused the word for “lentils” with the word for a “cat” and every time I try to pronounce something as innocent as 13:40 I make the world a better place by making people laugh.

4. Back to Harry, Harry has magic, how could she not, and a sisterly bond with a legendary ancient queen. This allows her to swing a sword like a pro after a month and ride a horse like she was born in a saddle. She is also able to win special trials even though her tutor during six weeks of preparations does not tell her what to expect whereas other people train their whole lives in order to win.

5. And then, when you think things cannot get more cheesy, she gets a magic sword. And needs to save the day (battle plans? so easy when compared to embroidery!). Or actually, the magic saves the day, because in this world magic is everything and can do everything and everybody dances to its tune.

Where is this fabulous world building I have been reading about in the reviews?! Homeland is essentially England down to St George (and his dragon); not only the name is similar but the whole culture is copy-pasted with no additions whatsoever. The enemy is a caricatural evil with no nuance to it: They have always been evil, they have always hated the Hillfolk, they are dehumanised so that there are no doubts to the fact that they are bad and absolutely must die by the thousands. Just the depth of this design might swallow you.

My first warning should be the abduction scene. The girl is kidnapped and… nothing. Not a reaction. She just calmly cooperates and does not ask a single question like why or what do her captors plan to do with her. I'm not saying Harry should have fits, but from a strong-minded heroine, and she is portrayed as one, I'd expect at least something along the line of "Unhand me this instant!" or "Whatever you think you are doing sir?" instead she goes as meekly as a cow and didn't raise an eyebrow at being treated this way.

Then there is the writing style: swords flickering with the colour of madness (what is the colour of madness?! or a “colour of exhaustion” for that matter?) overuse of “for” for I kid you not it is used in every other sentence, smouldering gazes and in general a very descriptive style with loads and loads of telling. The romance is so lame that my cat's love for the fridge has more passion in it.

I understand that some of the favourable reviews are sentimental ratings (I have those too). This is a vintage book and when it was released there might have been some magic to it. For older readers, this might have been a gateway into the genre. I get it. Having said this, I cannot say that The Blue Sword aged well. To the contrary. Today it is a ridiculous and pompous read. Unless you are in a mood for something spectacularly cheesy, avoid.

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You may also read the prequel: The Hero and the Crown ★★☆☆☆

I had the audio book of this set at +20% speed, and even so I couldn't make it past 33%. The story telling simply isn't that good. There's pages upon pages upon heaping pages of monumentally average world building which reads like it came out of any of a thousand generic fantasy novels. The characters have no real personality to speak of. The story starts off with the main character drinking orange juice, and the excitement does not build from there, but instead stays at that low level of boredom throughout. Even when the main character is kidnapped it's borrrring. I didn't know kidnappings could be written to be boring, but McKinley proved that it can be done.

In some ways, I believe The Blue Sword makes a better read than its companion novel, The Hero and the Crown. You get the sense that McKinley’s drawing from more sources in her creation of this world than in the fantasy dragon world described in the later published prequel. The story of The Blue Sword reads like a combination of those adventure books describing 19th Century British colonization practices in the East and an inversion the story of Prince Cor in The Horse and His Boy.

One thing I found interesting about the contrast between the two books in the series is sense of progression, or I should say regression, of the kingdom of Damar. The final pages of The Hero and the Crown describe a kingdom of vast power and influence, marking the beginning of a Golden Age of rule. In contrast, The Blue Sword depicts a kingdom that has gradually wasted away over 500 years; the once vast property of land, now little more than a stone city surrounded by hill country—a kingdom of waning influence when compared to the other foreign powerhouses currently surrounding its small territory.

The protagonist, Harry Crewe, becomes a figurative bridge attempting to bring together two separate worlds with two different cultures (the Homelanders, her native land and the Damarians), by waging a war against their common enemy, the Northerners. By itself, the story itself is quite good. I rather enjoyed the descriptions of Harry’s apprenticeship, learning to become one of King Corlath’s Riders in the Laprun trials. Also thought that Corlath and Harry made a good contrasting pair. Each is steadfast in their contrary beliefs; and it was fun to witness the progression of their ideals, enabling them to eventually meet on common ground.

However, I think the series suffers when you read the books together (prequel first), as the inconsistencies in the story tend to become more readily apparent. This was most noticeable in Aerin’s relationship with Luthe, which McKinley builds up in her later novel. When the relationship is compared to what's described in The Blue Sword, you realize that Aerin's story hasn't yet ended... it's left feeling incomplete.

Considering that this is an early work of McKinley's, The Blue Sword does make a good read, though I wouldn't necessarily suggest to read the books the same order in which I read them.

This was so much fun! A pure escapist fantasy read with an appealing heroine, interesting and even complex side characters and excellent world-building. One star off for the lack of a map and glossary.

An amazing ride. Beautifully descriptive with plenty of action and magic, The Blue Sword has earned a place on my "books I read over and over again" shelf.

The Blue Sword I found most fascinating and enjoyable for its setting. It takes place over three locations: Home, Damar, and The Hills. Theses places put me in mind of England, Gibraltar, and Morocco for the transitions from cool and simple green lands filled with leaves and gentle horses into unknown deserts filled with magic and mystery. Truly, this book could be read just for the description of tents and horses. As a girl who was never into the Black Beauty series and never romanticized horses as a child, I nevertheless found the horses and riding to be some of the best descriptions in the book.

What romantic interest there is between the characters is unexpected, not at all formulaic and therefore sweet and wonderful when it takes you by surprise.

The hill magic, kelar is also a fantastic addition to the text and rather than feeling pasted on or "Hey look, magic!" it is a rare part of life that is treated as both a gift and a maddening annoyance.

The presence of a female warrior protagonist is refreshingly human. Harry is far from the standard chainmail bikini clad, sword wielding, confidence oozing chosen one. As a reader I empathized with her confusion, bruises, discomfort, and annoyance. Harry often has moments of stating that she would really rather skip the mystery and know what is going on. When she gains skills and defeats foes, there is a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. My favorite part is that I actually didn't know what was going to happen. Harry is not the sort of heroine where you don't even frown when she meets the main bad guy because of course he'll be defeated. However, the situation is not so doomed as to be completely hopeless, where a victory would be utterly improbable and the result of a deus ex machina. You have faith in Harry's fighting abilities, as well as concern at the hordes she encounters.

I loved this book. Love love love love loved it.