The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley
~The Quick Review~
Harry is a young woman sent to live on the desert frontier with her only living relative. She’s low-key discontent, insecure, and strangely drawn both to the inhospitable landscape and its secretive, magical Hillfolk.
The king of the Hillfolk, Corlath, is simultaneously drawn to Harry—there’s something about her that is not what it seems. Something important … even if she is an Outlander.
The Blue Sword, for all its trains and guns and desert frontier entirely devoid of dragons, is a classic fantasy novel, and thus it comes with all the classical fantasy baggage. It stands out from the pack, however, in the nuance with which Harry is painted and her unusual—for a fantasy heroine, anyway—demeanor. An enjoyment of languid storytelling is important, as is a willingness to excuse a weak plot. That’s not what matters here. Harry does.
~The Real Review~
For some people, everything mentioned above is a deal-breaker, and when I read their reviews, I have a hard time refuting their points.
Harry is, essentially, a chosen one, impossibly perfect and yet perfectly insecure. The enemy is lacking more than depth—they’re just plain lacking. The progression to the climax has the expected checkpoints and a significant lack of tension on account of Harry being the chosen one.
And yet I really liked The Blue Sword, and I think the dramatic divide between people who love (and they love) it and those who hate (and boy do they hate) it comes down to whether they ‘get’ Harry.
Harry is not your average fantasy heroine. She’s not looking to avenge a wrong or save the world or even find adventure. She simply wants a place to feel at home. You can’t force the world to accept you and respect you and make you feel wanted. You can only control yourself.
Which is exactly what Harry does.
She looks the world in the eye, and even if she doesn’t like what she sees, she doesn’t flinch. She takes unpleasant transitions and transformations with a stolid, quiet dignity. It’s not that she doesn’t feel things— the writing clearly depicts her at ill-ease—it’s just that she’s trapped in situations outside of her control, and since she can’t control it, the next best thing is to control her reaction to it. To me, this felt like tremendous strength.
If Harry simply kept her quiet dignity throughout every encounter, it would have undermined the effect. Silence in the face of … everything would feel like acceptance. Thankfully that isn’t the case. When faced with things she can control, Harry puts her foot down, says her piece, and takes action without reservation or fear.
I think this is a wonderful stand to take in a YA novel. Children are not the masters of their own destiny, and there are plenty of unpleasant things they have no choice but to live through. It’s not terrible to show them a character handling events she cannot control without lashing out or engaging in pointless defiance. On the flip side, it’s important to show this same character absolutely stand up for herself and what she feels is right when she can.
Another complaint I’ve read about Harry is that she’s a Mary Sue. I have several reservations with this argument, not the least of which is that old joke:
What do you call a male Mary Sue?
A protagonist.
Seriously, though. Yes, Harry is preternaturally gifted at … everything, on account of some cosmic sort of influence. If she were a typical fantasy heroine with an active goal, this would be awful. Her being good at everything would strip the point of the novel of its tension.
As we established, though, Harry just wants to find a place that feels like home. Being thrust into a new culture and excelling at everything she touches doesn’t help her achieve her goal. It makes her stand out. Yes, she’s excelling at things the culture values, but her excellence singles her out. She can’t feel like she’s at home—she’s sitting on a freaking pedestal.
The other thing is that Harry’s preternatural gift is meaningless if she doesn’t apply it. And frankly, she could just as easily turn around and leave. Where she came from might not have felt homey, but it’s familiar and she understands her place there.
This, too, feels subtly powerful for the YA mind. You cannot control what your gifts are, but you can control how you use them, and sometimes simply showing up (or sticking around) takes more courage and grit than the ability to actually do the thing.
Maybe I’m reaching, but this sort of understated storytelling where looking closely at themes and actions and thoughts and maybe reading between some lines is critical to enjoying the book. The plot isn’t what makes The Blue Sword great. It’s the nuance. If that sort of nuance isn’t interesting to you, you’ll fall into the category of people who hate this book and don’t get the hype.
Now, I’ve hyped a good deal, but The Blue Sword isn’t perfect. One of the problems with the brilliance of the novel coming from its nuance is that when the plot does take center stage—as it inevitably must—my interest waned. I don’t care about the enemy, it’s pretty clear that I don’t need to feel particularly concerned for Harry or her allies, and there’s little room for the nuance that I loved. I still enjoyed it because I liked Harry and her animal friends, but it didn’t hold that magic that the beginning of the novel had.
Also, the tone of the book is rather … chill. There’s no immediacy, no sense of urgency, no feeling of closeness. As I was busy digging into nuance, this didn’t bother me. But again, if you’re coming in expecting a whirlwind of adventure and close-up emotion, you’re going to be disappointed. Robin McKinley don’t roll that way.
Finally, there’s the romance. It’s so low-key it could be optional. I’m not the biggest fan of romance and have a tenderness for any depiction of love that focuses on, like, friendship and respect over traditionally romantic things, so it works for me. I imagine it also would work for most young adults, who, again, this book was written for. But it should be expected that the romance is understated, lest you walk away disappointed.
I fear this review doesn’t sound as positive as I feel about The Blue Sword. I guess I’ll wrap it up by saying that I wish little-me, who read and re-read and re-re-read Robin McKinley’s The Hero and the Crown, knew this book existed.
And yes, this isn’t exactly “forgotten” like many of the other books I review. It has 54,000+ ratings with a 4.22 average rating on Goodreads, for goodness’ sake. It still is a little … cult-y, though. Like, if you look long enough you’ll probably find someone in your life who read and loved this book … but you’re going to have to do a lot of hunting. It took me 20 years to meet a fellow Robin McKinley fan.
Cover art by Kirk Reinert:
