A Sword of Bronze and Ashes

Kanda is a middle-aged farmer’s wife. She has three children, a husband who is not very bright but is kind and gentle, a house, some cows and some sheep. But once upon a time, oh once…

In the Hall of Roven there were six warriors, the Six Swords as they were known. The Lord of Roven, like Arthur of legend, had them swear to protect the weak and innocent. They would ride out to right wrongs, and to kill the wicked. Greatest of all of them was Ikandera Thygethyn, whose name means Great Warrior. Unlike Lancelot of legend, she was a woman.

The trouble with fighting the good fight is that it involves fighting. When the battle is won, when all of your enemies lie dead at your feet, when your sword and armour drip with the blood of the slain, who are you, if not a monster?

And so, like Camelot of legend, Roven fell. Because those who fought for it, and those who ruled it, and those who lived in it, were all too human. The Six became scattered. Some died, and some ran away.

The trouble with running from your past is that, no matter how well you hide, the past has a habit of catching up with you.

Thus it is that Kandra and her family must face the terror that destroyed Roven. There are three of them. Their names mean Burning, Hunger and Empty. They cannot die, save if they are struck by the black sword of the greatest warrior the world has ever known, the warrior who has forsaken the way of the sword forever, and who has buried that blade where even she should not be able to retrieve it.

The thing that people say most often about Anna Smith Spark’s work is that it is lyrical. If one is going to write about great warriors of times long forgotten, such a style is perhaps appropriate. In any case it leaves the rest of us mere scribblers gasping with envy. There are few people around who can write like that.

But A Sword of Bronze and Ashes is not just a beautifully written tale of heroic warriors. It is also a tale of a woman desperately trying to preserve her family, though her husband is terrified to discover the truth about his wife, and her teenage daughters are disdainful of their elderly mother’s abilities. Kanda needs to save her family, and perhaps the world, but mostly she is just too tired.

“I am the mother of three children, Calian. A great deal of my time is spent running to and fro doing pointless things.”

So the book is about being a parent as much as it is about being a warrior. It is also about why people turn to evil. The bad guys, Geiamnyn (Burning) in particular, are recognizable from social media. They were once ordinary and vulnerable, then they became hurt and angry, and eventually the anger so consumed them that there was nothing left except hate, and a desire to hurt others as they had once been hurt.

A Sword of Bronze and Ashes is sold as being set in the Bronze Age. Certainly the technology is appropriate. Smith Spark even had the horror of industrialised mining with child labour to satisfy the ever increasing demand for metal. Though that, of course, dates as far back as the flint mines of the Neolithic. But the book is not an historical novel. Nor is it an attempt to make use of Bronze Age mythology because, frankly, we have very little idea of how and who they worshipped. It is a fantasy novel, and it is its own thing.

What I can say is that the Hall of Roven, which is clearly a hill fort, seems to be populated by the Tylwyth Teg more than by ordinary mortals. I would love to read more about them. And I do want to know why the Lord of Roven, despite very obviously being a man, is heavily pregnant.

Title: A Sword of Bronze and Ashes
By: Anna Smith Spark
Publisher: Flame Tree Press
Purchase links:
Amazon UK
Amazon US
Bookshop.org UK
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