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The Sword and the Lion
With all the energy and power of ancient history brought to life, this epic story tells of war and how it alters the very fabric of society--by changing the course of nations and touching people's lives. Set in the Bronze Age, in a land reminiscent of Greece during the height of its city-states, this classical epic chronicles the conquest of a legendary city.
632 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published June 1, 1993
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
December 25, 2014
I feel like I've been reading this book my whole life. It was soooo sloooow and soooo loooong. And I never quite loved it, but I also didn't want to give up on it, and now that it's over I kind of miss it.
September 23, 2023
I first read this book when it was published 30 years ago. I loved it then; I love it today.
I've long thought that this book suffered due to bad cover copy. The description posted on Goodreads is much more detailed than the original cover copy, which simply read "Haunted by a terrifyingly real vision of her people destroyed--could she find a way to turn defeat to victory by following magic's path?"
That's it. All of it.
When I read that cover copy, I expected a character (probably female) that would become a wizard of some kind in order to save her people. That's so not what happens here. It almost makes me wonder if this cover copy was based on a description that was provided to the publisher before the book was finished--and no one bothered to update it because it was "close enough."
What happens in the book is this: at the Spring Festival, the earth goddess Denota speaks through her High Priestess, Tephys, to warn the people of Ghezrat that the Diye Haff are coming to invade. Breyd is a teenager chosen to serve as a priestess for a year, and during the ceremony, she sees a vision of battle and of her father being killed. Denota (through Tephys) announces that she will create Dyaddi to fight the invaders and that all is not lost, although the days ahead will be dark.
Ghezrat is modeled after the ancient Greek city states. The Diye Haff are lead by Haffat, and he's presented as being something of an Alexander the Great character. Haffat has recently converted to worshipping Axetelos, the Lion god, and is conquering the region based on advice from the Lion's priest, Knoe.
The Dyaddi are a fascinating concept. Mature soldiers are chosen by the goddess to serve as one half of a set of paired fighters. Each soldier is then partnered with one of his daughters, which will then serve as the other half. The goddess bonds them together, sharing the soldier's knowledge with his daughter. Together, they move faster than any soldier and destroy any enemy in their path. Breyd and her father, Menelaeus, are one of the 34 pairs chosen. Denota has never called so many pairs; this should warn Ghezrat that the coming fight will be brutal.
In addition to Breyd, this is also the story of Apodain, the prince's nephew. He wants to fight the enemy, but as a noble he won't be able to make choices about his own fate until he reaches the age of majority for the nobility--22. Until then, his widowed mother, Khadat, rules his life, and she refuses to lose yet another member of her family to a war. Instead, she will try to destroy his will and his reputation, withdrawing him from the royal chariot forces so that everyone believes him a coward.
This is the story of a prince, Pelledar, who has never fought in a battle and worries that he doesn't have the strength to defeat the Diye Haff.
This is the story of Tar, Breyd's brother, partially blind and embittered because he cannot join the soldiers. Instead, he is a signal caller, and he hates that his sister fights when he cannot.
There's more to this story than even what I've mentioned above, and it just gets better and better. One of the things I loved about this book is that it is truly honest about the horror of Bronze Age warfare (with the addition of magic), but it also isn't descriptive of that horror. Instead, we understand the emotional impact of the battles, the injuries, and the losses.
Here on Goodreads, the author is identified as Ru Emerson, writing under the pseudonym Roberta Cray. I don't know if that's true, but I know that Cray never published any other books under that name. So far as I know, the book was only ever given a single printing, and I think that's a dreadful mistake. It needs to be reprinted--or reissued as a ebook. My paperback copy is 30 years old and held together with packing tape. I don't think it can handle being read again, which makes me terribly sad. How many good books have we lost to limited print runs and failed bindings? I am sad that this book may be one of them.
I've long thought that this book suffered due to bad cover copy. The description posted on Goodreads is much more detailed than the original cover copy, which simply read "Haunted by a terrifyingly real vision of her people destroyed--could she find a way to turn defeat to victory by following magic's path?"
That's it. All of it.
When I read that cover copy, I expected a character (probably female) that would become a wizard of some kind in order to save her people. That's so not what happens here. It almost makes me wonder if this cover copy was based on a description that was provided to the publisher before the book was finished--and no one bothered to update it because it was "close enough."
What happens in the book is this: at the Spring Festival, the earth goddess Denota speaks through her High Priestess, Tephys, to warn the people of Ghezrat that the Diye Haff are coming to invade. Breyd is a teenager chosen to serve as a priestess for a year, and during the ceremony, she sees a vision of battle and of her father being killed. Denota (through Tephys) announces that she will create Dyaddi to fight the invaders and that all is not lost, although the days ahead will be dark.
Ghezrat is modeled after the ancient Greek city states. The Diye Haff are lead by Haffat, and he's presented as being something of an Alexander the Great character. Haffat has recently converted to worshipping Axetelos, the Lion god, and is conquering the region based on advice from the Lion's priest, Knoe.
The Dyaddi are a fascinating concept. Mature soldiers are chosen by the goddess to serve as one half of a set of paired fighters. Each soldier is then partnered with one of his daughters, which will then serve as the other half. The goddess bonds them together, sharing the soldier's knowledge with his daughter. Together, they move faster than any soldier and destroy any enemy in their path. Breyd and her father, Menelaeus, are one of the 34 pairs chosen. Denota has never called so many pairs; this should warn Ghezrat that the coming fight will be brutal.
In addition to Breyd, this is also the story of Apodain, the prince's nephew. He wants to fight the enemy, but as a noble he won't be able to make choices about his own fate until he reaches the age of majority for the nobility--22. Until then, his widowed mother, Khadat, rules his life, and she refuses to lose yet another member of her family to a war. Instead, she will try to destroy his will and his reputation, withdrawing him from the royal chariot forces so that everyone believes him a coward.
This is the story of a prince, Pelledar, who has never fought in a battle and worries that he doesn't have the strength to defeat the Diye Haff.
This is the story of Tar, Breyd's brother, partially blind and embittered because he cannot join the soldiers. Instead, he is a signal caller, and he hates that his sister fights when he cannot.
There's more to this story than even what I've mentioned above, and it just gets better and better. One of the things I loved about this book is that it is truly honest about the horror of Bronze Age warfare (with the addition of magic), but it also isn't descriptive of that horror. Instead, we understand the emotional impact of the battles, the injuries, and the losses.
Here on Goodreads, the author is identified as Ru Emerson, writing under the pseudonym Roberta Cray. I don't know if that's true, but I know that Cray never published any other books under that name. So far as I know, the book was only ever given a single printing, and I think that's a dreadful mistake. It needs to be reprinted--or reissued as a ebook. My paperback copy is 30 years old and held together with packing tape. I don't think it can handle being read again, which makes me terribly sad. How many good books have we lost to limited print runs and failed bindings? I am sad that this book may be one of them.
July 1, 2016
One of my favorite books, I actually felt an accute loss when the story was over. I wanted it to continue...and I find this book brings me back time and time again. I have owned so many copies because I have loaned it out to people who are dying to loan it again to friends and family. Depth of story and character, not speed of pace is what you will find here. Settle in, and enjoy.
October 6, 2015
Just reread this:
Original review (07.11.2011): I'd give this 2.5 stars. The setting is good, not your typical medieval fantasy, but clunky prose and melodramatic character re/actions kept it from being a better book. Things settled in a got better around the 350-page mark, and the ending was satisfying, but a reader shouldn't need half the book to get interested in the story.
this time around (25.09.2015): 3.5 stars. Familiarity does not necessarily breed contempt. I still found the melodrama to be distancing, but I was able to relax into the story a lot earlier this time around and enjoyed it more.
Original review (07.11.2011): I'd give this 2.5 stars. The setting is good, not your typical medieval fantasy, but clunky prose and melodramatic character re/actions kept it from being a better book. Things settled in a got better around the 350-page mark, and the ending was satisfying, but a reader shouldn't need half the book to get interested in the story.
this time around (25.09.2015): 3.5 stars. Familiarity does not necessarily breed contempt. I still found the melodrama to be distancing, but I was able to relax into the story a lot earlier this time around and enjoyed it more.
June 15, 2009
This book wouldn't let me go. Really good, strong female characters, and an interesting way about it. Kind of a Goddess against God, warriors against city folks, with the interesting bonding of Pairs. Older men and one of their unmarried daughters, who fight for the Goddess as Pairs. The Goddess chooses, and then creates a bond, so the father-daughter team can feel each other and know each others faults, fight and protect each other, and then be used by the Goddess as a berserker type of fighter.
November 14, 2024
I've read this book several times. I like the setting and the portrayals. I really can understand the idea of defending what is yours. I loathe the idea of "It's mine if I can take it from you," and this book is all about the response "Only until I can get it back." Well, there is more to it than that, but that's what I focused on this time.
Nov 2024: Rereading to see if it still deserves its place on my shelf, and it does.
Nov 2024: Rereading to see if it still deserves its place on my shelf, and it does.
February 3, 2012
enjoyed this book..loved the concept of the Dyaddi..fighting Pairs..father and daughter..liked the characters..and a good storyline.
March 3, 2013
One of my favorite books of all time. Every few years I read it, love it each time. Great characters and setting, good mix of drama and historical fiction. So amazing!
March 24, 2016
Love this book; I have to re-read it every few years.
August 26, 2022
Want to read a great fantasy adventure? After finishing up the Game of Thrones series a few years back I decided to give it a rest then recently picked up The Sword and the Lion and shot right through it in record time! It has all the elements of a great fantasy set in a world with a Bronze Age Culture. It tells of a great, powerful city-state at the edge of an inland sea; a prosperous trading state with a proud culture and protected by a strong Earth Goddess. In its vast history it had never been conquered.
But now an unstoppable Alexander the Great-type conqueror approaches with its own powerful God of War and the city must prepare for a titanic confrontation. Will the city survive? The question is not as simple as one might think as the tale centers around a middle-class family held together in a volatile existence by a love for one another that proves to be fierce and unwavering. They will play a vital role in the events that follow, along with a semi-royal family ruthlessly run by its family matriarch and to a lesser extent the conqueror himself and his entourage.
Highly recommended this is the best read I've had this year.
But now an unstoppable Alexander the Great-type conqueror approaches with its own powerful God of War and the city must prepare for a titanic confrontation. Will the city survive? The question is not as simple as one might think as the tale centers around a middle-class family held together in a volatile existence by a love for one another that proves to be fierce and unwavering. They will play a vital role in the events that follow, along with a semi-royal family ruthlessly run by its family matriarch and to a lesser extent the conqueror himself and his entourage.
Highly recommended this is the best read I've had this year.
September 15, 2020
I loved it all over again!! Such details of characters and their lives and families. Such details of battles and fights and training. And such details of the land, the culture and how they lived. Sigh. I miss it already.
April 20, 2008
p. good genre fantasy
Want to read
October 6, 2008I have apparently read this, but I don't remember it, and may have been cranky at the time.
November 12, 2008
it was okay started off slow got better. people died too convieniently. but it was okay
April 1, 2012
my favorite book...I have read it too many times to count!!
April 12, 2017
Latest re-read: 4/10/17
I had a very vivid memory when I finished this book this other night, about how much I hated it the first time I read it. It made me laugh, considering this has been one of my favorite comfort reads for the last decade or so.
I think because it's almost anti-epic fantasy. It has the same familiar elements: omniscient narrator dipping in and out of character's heads, a sprawling new world, supernatural elements, characters thrown into new and overwhelming situations. But Cray takes each of these elements and then subtly undercuts them.
For one, this is not your usual paint-by-numbers European fantasy world. We're somewhere in the ancient Middle East instead: the heroine's favorite meal is bread with spiced oil and peppers, chariots are the main artillery, and the invaders are considered unnerving for their blue eyes. (My guess is the city itself is based on Babylon, but seems to be located where we would map northern Egypt.) The premise is suitably impressive, with armies at war and a city under siege, but the main focus stays surprisingly domestic: on families both common and royal, the clash of personalities instead of weapons. There's a setup for a big feminist fantasy payoff -- a la Song of the Lioness quartet, where the heroine proves she's just as good a fighter as any boy -- but it's... subtle in execution. It's the earth goddess Denota and her priestess against the dismissive Lion-god priest and his pet emperor, and the key to victory lies in fighting Pairs: young and untrained women given a psychic bond with their aging warrior fathers, and this goddess-granted symbiosis of youth and experience creates otherworldy ability. So while the heroine becomes Other, she does so not for self-advancement but in self-sacrifice, and with the full permission and encouragement of her society. Well, more or less. But this is the first book I read where a warrior woman became so without being disowned or cast out. In fact, Breyd needs her father as much as he needs her. I'm surprised how affected I am by that at this point in my life.
Don't get me wrong: this is still, at is heart, the story of a young woman whose world and self-perception is forever changed by the opportunities granted in becoming a fighter. And I don't necessarily prefer Cray's story to those which are more about direct social defiance. But it's really nice to have different stories, different approaches to how young women can claim their lives as their own.
There's a lot of that -- complexity and nuance -- in the story's execution. For instance: no one in this story is truly evil, or un-pitiable. The emperor Haffat is not malicious or sadistic, merely ambitious, and his priest likewise. On the flip, the heroes are not all lovable and admirable. The prince of the city is irresolute (although he grows and changes throughout). The high priestess is cold and demanding. That's what I find is the true charm of this book. It's real interest is not in creating black-and-white drama, but in trying to faithfully reproduce the emotional reality of war on both the macro and micro level: families and cities in conflict.
It can suck the energy out of the narrative drive at times, I won't lie. This is less a page-turner and more of a tapestry of humanity, where the supernatural is a McGuffin. And I was so bitterly underwhelmed by all that, as a younger reader who wanted stories of triumph and untainted victory. But I like it very much, now. Years before Suzanne Collins wrote about about the humanity of young women sacrificed to serve as symbols, of the bleakness and unfairness of war, and how many who encounter it can never reclaim who they were before it, Roberta Cray managed to fit all of that into The Sword and the Lion, with (I feel) excessive grace.
I had a very vivid memory when I finished this book this other night, about how much I hated it the first time I read it. It made me laugh, considering this has been one of my favorite comfort reads for the last decade or so.
I think because it's almost anti-epic fantasy. It has the same familiar elements: omniscient narrator dipping in and out of character's heads, a sprawling new world, supernatural elements, characters thrown into new and overwhelming situations. But Cray takes each of these elements and then subtly undercuts them.
For one, this is not your usual paint-by-numbers European fantasy world. We're somewhere in the ancient Middle East instead: the heroine's favorite meal is bread with spiced oil and peppers, chariots are the main artillery, and the invaders are considered unnerving for their blue eyes. (My guess is the city itself is based on Babylon, but seems to be located where we would map northern Egypt.) The premise is suitably impressive, with armies at war and a city under siege, but the main focus stays surprisingly domestic: on families both common and royal, the clash of personalities instead of weapons. There's a setup for a big feminist fantasy payoff -- a la Song of the Lioness quartet, where the heroine proves she's just as good a fighter as any boy -- but it's... subtle in execution. It's the earth goddess Denota and her priestess against the dismissive Lion-god priest and his pet emperor, and the key to victory lies in fighting Pairs: young and untrained women given a psychic bond with their aging warrior fathers, and this goddess-granted symbiosis of youth and experience creates otherworldy ability. So while the heroine becomes Other, she does so not for self-advancement but in self-sacrifice, and with the full permission and encouragement of her society. Well, more or less. But this is the first book I read where a warrior woman became so without being disowned or cast out. In fact, Breyd needs her father as much as he needs her. I'm surprised how affected I am by that at this point in my life.
Don't get me wrong: this is still, at is heart, the story of a young woman whose world and self-perception is forever changed by the opportunities granted in becoming a fighter. And I don't necessarily prefer Cray's story to those which are more about direct social defiance. But it's really nice to have different stories, different approaches to how young women can claim their lives as their own.
There's a lot of that -- complexity and nuance -- in the story's execution. For instance: no one in this story is truly evil, or un-pitiable. The emperor Haffat is not malicious or sadistic, merely ambitious, and his priest likewise. On the flip, the heroes are not all lovable and admirable. The prince of the city is irresolute (although he grows and changes throughout). The high priestess is cold and demanding. That's what I find is the true charm of this book. It's real interest is not in creating black-and-white drama, but in trying to faithfully reproduce the emotional reality of war on both the macro and micro level: families and cities in conflict.
It can suck the energy out of the narrative drive at times, I won't lie. This is less a page-turner and more of a tapestry of humanity, where the supernatural is a McGuffin. And I was so bitterly underwhelmed by all that, as a younger reader who wanted stories of triumph and untainted victory. But I like it very much, now. Years before Suzanne Collins wrote about about the humanity of young women sacrificed to serve as symbols, of the bleakness and unfairness of war, and how many who encounter it can never reclaim who they were before it, Roberta Cray managed to fit all of that into The Sword and the Lion, with (I feel) excessive grace.
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