A SWORD NAMED TRUTH

Set after the events of Fleeing Peace (2011),
the first installment of Smith’s new epic fantasy trilogy follows the
adventures of a group of untested heroes as they begin to form an alliance of
young rulers and magic users to stand against a looming invasion from a mythic
evil.

With the forces of Norsunder threatening to enter the temporal
world through rifts after having been vanquished more than 4,700 years earlier,
Senrid, the newly crowned king of the politically unstable nation of Marloven
Hess, Hibern, a highly talented mage student, and Liere, a young shopkeeper’s
daughter who saved the realm in an earlier adventure, understand the grave
danger a Norsunder invasion brings to all of Sartorias-deles. As the young
heroes slowly begin to form their alliance with other leaders—like Atan, the
15-year-old queen of Sartor, the oldest country in the world—the villainous
commanders of Norsunder, Detlev and his nephew Siamis, plot to put the entire
realm under magical control. But while Smith’s signature realm of
Sartorias-deles is richly described and full of narrative potential, the entire
novel has an unfocused feel to it. The unwieldiness of the numerous plot
threads slows the pace down to a crawl and, coupled with a conspicuous lack of
significant action (particularly in the first 500 pages), gives the book a
bloated quality. Readers may also be confused about the target audience of this
trilogy. The main characters are all young adults, and the content—a looming
magical war where entire populations could be wiped out—is decidedly dark. The
tone, however, is strangely light, downplaying the violence and concentrating
more on character dynamics. Ultimately, this long novel falls flat, with
cardboard characters, excruciatingly slow pacing, and very little action:
disappointing on almost all levels.

Epic fantasy fans would be advised to find their literary
escapism elsewhere.