SOLVED. Adult Epic Fantasy/ Sci Fi series. Starts with "tournament" to win a special sword & plot continues from there with political intrigue, attempts to steal sword from owner & unravelling of the world's religion. Spoilers ahead. [s]

[Agus]

Alright, what I remember:

I read the series (I don't remember how long it was) around ten years ago, call it 2012, and it was already complete. It hovers between YA and Adult fiction.

The premise is that, for reasons I don't remember, there will be a tournament, or more like a series of challenges, to win a special sword forged by the blacksmith god of the world.

There were many narrators, or focal characters, among them: the main main character, his friend, his eventual mentor and a warrior prince who was also the villain.

The main main character was a boy who'd been kicked out of sword school (don't remember the name) even though he was probably the best of them. (view spoiler)[The reason for this is that he fought his classmates when they raided a nearby village and raped a girl there. (hide spoiler)] I might be off here, but I'm pretty sure he was some sort of scribe or bookmaker because it was his family's business at the start of the book. (view spoiler)[As you might have guessed, he's also the one who wins the sword. (hide spoiler)]

His best friend went with him to sword school and participated in the spoiler stuff, but he was kicked out, too, I think for being too weak. (view spoiler)[He'd later turn out to be gay. And have mind-blowing, destiny-revealing sex with a god. (hide spoiler)] He becomes a sorcerer and, as part of the process, gets hanged by his mentor at one point.

The main main character's mentor is a sword master. He trains the mmc on their way to the tournament. He later grows to resent him.(view spoiler)[Because he won the sword. He gets over it and regrets how he treated him once he gets his own. (hide spoiler)] In later books, he gets together with a princess he's guarding.

I don't remember almost anything about the prince except for the fact that he's a demigod, which you can tell because he has two pupils, or one suspiciously elongated one.

On that note, there's also a queen who's I think one seventh goddess? Whose pupils are barely stretched. The fact that she refers to herself with the royal "We" is made a big deal, but I don't remember much more about her.

There's a whole society of warrior women, we're gonna call them amazons, and one of them competes in the tournament.

There's a mysterious woman that travels with the mmc's group on the way to the tournament and has sex with him. (view spoiler)[Yes, this is important, because they have a daughter together, who she uses to steal the magic sword, which would only be held by its owner or someone with his dna. She also kills the amazon who competes because she has sex with the mcc. (hide spoiler)]

There's a boy that appears in the second book? I think? (view spoiler)[Who's revealed to be a girl in a sauna in the amazon's city, and later to be the mcc's daughter at the end of the book. (hide spoiler)]

Details:

The best swordsmen carry their scabbards at an angle so that they can execute a beheading move as they pull their sword out.

The swordsmen "level" is shown in bracelets.


And about plot stuff, which is necessarily spoilery, so I won't bother hiding. Here's your warning. SPOILERS AHOY.

The mentor's resentment blows over when the sword is stolen, since his "belief" that the mcc didn't deserve the sword in the first place seems to be confirmed. He actually attacks the mcc and almost beheads him, but stops at the last moment. The mcc, who didn't defend himself, cuts ties and throws away his bracelet, which I believe to have previously been the mentor's the he gave to him.

The mentor later gets his own magic sword, also forged by the blacksmith god, which allows him to let go of his jealousy. He even cries about the state of his relationship with the mcc when he receives it.

The world's magic, especially the gods', turns out to be extremely advanced science. The mcc is actually a result of genetic modification - he's conceived the day before her mother went on her period, but the blacksmith god asked for her permission to make sure he wouldn't be aborted on the grounds that he'd have a great destiny, not telling her that he'd also be implanting the dna of an old hero from a lost city.

This city is a MAJOR plot point , at least in the last book, but I hardly remember it. I think their technology developed to the point they tried to rebel against the gods? And the guy whose dna the blacksmith used either saved them somehow or led the rebellion. The point is that the city still exists, isolated from the medieval world that surrounds it.

There's a secret amazon city, I want to say in the center of the earth?, where a slightly different race of amazons live. The book mentions that they're even more aggressive and xenophobic than the known amazons.

The best friend is somehow captured by the gods and, as I said, has sex with the Mandatory Evil God, and the experience reveals to him that the role of wizards is to observe the state of the world and report it to some beings with the power to destroy it if they don't like how it's developed. The series ends with him disappearing to go report to them, with the knowledge that they don't know what these beings will think or, since time works differently for them, whether the end would come in seconds or centuries if they decided it.

That's all I can remember at the moment.

[Lobstergirl, au gratin]

Maybe something by Gene Wolfe?

How many books are in the series?

[Agus]

Lobstergirl wrote: "Maybe something by Gene Wolfe?

How many books are in the series?"

That's what I was referring to when I said I don't remember how long the series is - I don't know. Three at least, five at the unlikeliest most.

I just checked his goodreads page and it's not by Gene Wolfe. Thanks for helping anyway!

[Agus]

SOLVED: The series is "Tramórea" by Javier Negrete.

I'm very embarrassed because this book doesn't seem to even have an English translation - in my defense, I thought it had been translated TO Spanish FROM English, like most other books I'd read. I actually found it by reverse engineering the possible google search by finding a different book series I didn't remember (by Ursula K Le Guin, so thankfully easier to find) and then searching its name in Spanish (along with some stuff I guessed my father, who found it in the first place, must have included in his search).

La espada de fuego

[David]

Since you appear to like Javier Negrete's works, I recommend La mirada de las Furias.

[Kris]

(Added a spoiler alert to the header/ topic title.)

[Agus]

@David To be perfectly honest, I don't know if I like his work - I did, after all, read it when I was like 13. It's more like I got bitten by the nostalgia bug and couldn't ignore it even if it took a whole week to satisfy it. If I do like it, and having read the first few pages, I think I will, I'll definitely take your advice. Thank you!

@Kris thanks for catching that!