Valgard is a berserker, prone to fits of rage, and will (minor spoiler alert: this happens relatively early on in the narrative) kill most of his family for merely trying to stand up to him – although, of course, they are his family by circumstance rather than by blood. Owing to some conflict involving Orm, an elf and a witch make off with Orm’s son and replace him with Valgard, a troll-born changeling Orm’s son is taken to be raised by elves, who give him the name Skafloc. I wish he had followed up with another book based on the adventures of the baby taken by Odin and the lives of some the other characters portrayed in The Broken Sword. Of the three I’ve gotten to thus far, my. Anderson's background lends itself to the seamless weaving of Norse gods, myths, and folklore into this sad epic. The hero of The Broken Sword (FANTASY MASTERWORKS) is Skafloc, son of Orm the Strong but raised by elves as their foster-son. The Broken Sword, perhaps the best known and most renowned of Poul Anderson’s novels, is the third book of his that I’ve read, and with that I put a notch in the last of his Appendix N entries. In his greed for land and power, Orm the Strong slays the family of a Saxon witchand for his sins, the Northman must pay with his newborn son. Stolen by elves and replaced by a changeling. Published the same year as The Fellowship of the Ring, Poul Anderson’s novel The Broken Sword draws on similar Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon sources. Published the same year as The Fellowship of the Ring, Poul Anderson’s novel The Broken Sword draws on similar Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon sources.

Instead of Tolkien’s black-and-white vision of heroes and villains, Anderson is all noir. Published the same year as The Fellowship of the Ring, Poul Anderson’s novel The Broken Sword draws on similar Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon sources. This acclaimed fantasy classic of men, elves, and gods is at once breathtakingly exciting and heartbreakingly tragic. And yet for many, including the giant of modern fantasy, Michael Moorcock, The Broken Sword is superior to Tolkien’s novel: in an illuminating article about Anderson’s novel, Moorcock writes that The Broken Sword ‘seems to echo the existential mood of the west after the second world war’.

The broken sword by poul anderson