David Bishop's Reviews > The Blue Sword

Hrrm. I'm going to say that this would have been rated higher, before I started was old enough to start thinking about things like "Is hand-wavy magic *really* a good reason for a grown man to kidnap a teenage girl?" and "Boy, this fictional culture certainly does seem to be drawing heavily on that of the Afghan people, it sure would suck this turned into a White Savior narrative."

I can absolutely see why, for a certain subset of people, this is Their Book™ from childhood. Unfortunately I didn't read it back then (I somehow missed this and only read The Hero and The Crown).