Books about modern guys who find themselves in medieval Europe? Who even knew that was a subgenre! Yay!

Wow, am I conflicted over Sword of the Bright Lady. On one hand, it’s not my thing at all. On the other hand, I stayed up until 1 AM to finish reading it.

Basically, Sword of the Bright Lady is a look at what it’d be like to wind up inside a fantasy game. The protagonist, Christopher Sinclair, winds up in another world on complete accident with no idea where he is or how to get home. When he’s drafted into a seemingly endless war, Christopher decides his best chance of survival is start an industrial revolution.

I don’t know where specifically Planck was drawing inspiration from, but if like me you have some experience with Dungeons and Dragons, elements of Sword of the Bright Lady should feel very familiar. When a person dies, tael is gained. If you collect enough tael, you move up a rank, gaining more powers and abilities. The society of Sword of the Bright Lady is extremely stratified along class lines with ranked nobles depending on peasants not only as a means to til the fields but also as a source of tael. Oh, people can also be resurrected or healed depending on how much tael you’re willing to expend.

See my comparison to DnD?

On one hand the approach of “what would it actually be like to live in the world of a Dungeons and Dragons manual” was interesting, although I feel like some things were adapted which shouldn’t have been (“affiliation” i.e. alignment). On the other hand…. it meant that the world of Sword of the Bright Lady felt like the very familiar standard medieval Europe fantasy book.

There were other things that bothered me about Sword of the Bright Lady. For one thing, it really seemed to have a fondness for using elements of Japanese culture (katanas for instance) but the cast was entirely white. The book also wasn’t too great on gender, and I felt like I was never able to get a handle on what women’s role in the society was. I wasn’t thrilled that the inciting incident is Christopher rescuing a peasant girl from being raped by a nobleman – it felt like rape being used yet again as a cheap plot tool, this time to also make the male protagonist look good. I did feel like Sword of the Bright Lady was trying with its female characters, but it kept giving off the vibe of “women are mysterious creatures who cannot be understood by mere mortal man.” It also didn’t help that the women were all very attractive and interested in the protagonist.

Christopher was not a particularly interesting protagonist. He had the feel of being written as an “every man” type character and I usually find those really dull. He also seemed to forget pretty quickly about going home again. It gets brought up occasionally but still seems largely absent from his thoughts. There’s also the problem with narrative tension being lost when you can revive the dead. Plus, the revival and the magic healings made it feel like there wasn’t lasting consequences on the characters, although the end may have challenged that.

But for whatever reason I enjoyed reading Sword of the Bright Lady enough to get to the end and to consider reading the next book. I spent a while thinking about why this might be. Besides the nerdiness appeal of the DnD connection, I think I liked it because the fantasy society is actually going through change instead of just being stagnant. And I really love it when fantasy settings actually experience change.

As I said at the beginning of my review, I’m conflicted. I think this is a case of me liking the plot and core ideas a lot more than I liked the setting, characters, or execution. I’m still evaluating as to whether or not I’ll read the second book.

Originally posted on The Illustrated Page.

Disclaimer: I received a free copy from Pyr in exchange for an honest review. ( )

Hoe to explain this book...I mean. Ok I will try. The first part is easy.

There is our world, but there are other worlds too. As Christopher finds out when he suddenly finds himself in one. And like he should, it is totally alien to him, everything. He has questions about everything (and yes they speak another language, Norwegian to my eye). There are Gods? What about this religion? What is magic? Why are people ranked? Why are farmboys used as canon fodder? Who are they fighting? What is the Dark? Thanks to his questions we get to know this world were a constant war is going on and where there is magic. And the Gods are real as he pledges himself to one.

The whole magic thing and how you can move up in society was cool. I also liked that he was both clueless and had something to offer. He knows science, and hey if you want to get anywhere in this war then that might be a good thing. I would be totally lost if I got there btw.

Sure he was smart, a bit too smart. But hey he has a purpose in that world. So if someone got him there then of course they are gonna take someone who can make a difference.

An interesting world and I wonder how this whole adventure will turn out in the end for him, and this world. ( )

Many will probably read Sword of the Bright Lady and think what a peculiar world our protagonist Christopher Sinclair has landed in, with all these funny magical rules and strange way of doing things. On the other hand, if you’re a gamer, then you just might see things a bit differently, and a lot of the elements will have that persistent, familiar ring.

As already pointed out by many reviewers, the world of this book feels reminiscent of a video game. For example, gaining ranks and becoming more powerful by defeating your enemies, then plundering their bodies for loot is like the foundation of any role-playing game. Fortifying your base, allocating your resources, and delegating responsibilities to your minions while arming your fighters and supplying your crafters to make sure they churn out raw materials and products for the war effort also happens to be essential for strategy games. And the golden rule of battles and duels in Sword of the Bright Lady – that is, fight and deplete your opponent’s tael before they deplete yours – sounds extraordinary like the tongue-in-cheek “advice” I used to tell my raid group back when I was leading 25-mans in World of Warcraft: “Let’s all try and get the bosses’ hit points to zero before he gets our hit points to zero, please.”

There are many more examples like this, and as the author had confirmed in a comment on another blogger’s review that he had intended to write a book exploring what it would feel like to be an actual person in the games we play, I had a lot of fun spotting the similarities and wondering what aspects might actually be subtle references to gaming. The concept itself is REALLY cool. The book begins with Christopher waking up in a strange, new world with no memory of how he got there. How many game narrative start off just like that? He gets drafted into an eternal war (as an online gamer, a war that goes on forever was one of those “AHA!” moments for me, because we all know in an MMO you can never truly “win”) by serving as a priest of the Bright Lady, joining the ranks of her followers who can heal wounds by using their magic and, for the right price, resurrect the dead (another “AHA!”) But then, drawn by the opportunity to return home to his own world, Christopher goes and pledges himself to the god of war, which sets off a series of unpredictable and violent events.

By all rights, I should have fallen in love with Sword of the Bright Lady. After all, I usually find myself drawn to any story with a gaming angle, no matter how tenuous the link. However, in the end “love” might be too powerful a word to describe how I felt about the book, though I did have fun and enjoyed reading it quite a bit. There were just a few things that added up to keep me from embracing this one completely.

Firstly, something about Christopher just doesn’t sit right with me. While I don’t pretend to be an expert on how a person would react when waking up to an unfamiliar world surrounded by strangers, still, Christopher’s behavior and many of his decisions and actions just didn’t seem realistic or normal to me. And while he clearly didn’t know about all the ways of this new place, he did seem to know quite a lot – perhaps too much to be believable. And though I was aware of the nature of this fantasy world, the people took to Christopher’s new ideas and projects much too easily, with not much fuss or resistance at all, which also didn’t feel very believable to me.

This segues perfectly into my second point, which is that the whole premise of this novel feeling like it’s hovering in this awkward place between trying to convey the realism and authenticity of this world but at the same time negating a lot of that by throwing in some pretty outlandish situations that make the story feel almost satirical. The book feels like it wants it both ways, which is a difficult balance to strike. I’m not sure I liked this “in between” between feeling, and in fact if Christopher’s experience is meant to be a parody of sorts of what it might feel like to be a person in a video game – which is quite an ingenious and unique idea – I’d actually have liked to see the author carry that premise even further.

To sum it all up, I think there are a couple of missed opportunities to make this book stand out more, which for me is the only factor holding it back from being a truly excellent read. But I can’t deny there are some fascinating ideas in here, and overall it’s a very strong novel from author M.C. Planck. ( )

Full Review at TenaciousReader: http://www.tenaciousreader.com/2014/08/11/sword-of-the-bright-lady-by-m-c-planck...

I have to admit; I found the concept of someone from our world landing in the middle of a medieval style fantasy story quite intriguing. I mean, really, we spend our free time reading about such things, but what would it really be like to wake up in one? Dirty, smelly and full of hard work. Probably not near as much fun as reading. So, curiosity grabbed me pretty quick, I couldn’t help but want to see how our protagonist, Christopher (one of us), fared in this new strange world.

About the magic in this world, I actually found it quite interesting and disturbing. To gain magical ability, you collect something called tael. Cool, right? It can even be used as a type of currency, purchasing favors from priests as well as social status. Just find a way to harvest tael, and you can advance, do magic, become superhuman in fights making it near on impossible for mundane (non-magical) people to harm you, and if they do, well, just use some tael and heal yourself. Sounds awesome! Let’s find some tael!

Well, it’s cool until you find out that tael is harvested from the dead. Then there's some interesting questions about the power and status attained from tael, versus the cost of acquiring it.

Christopher seems to know a lot of convenient things when he gets there. Things that help advance the technology of the world. I have to admit, part of me felt like he knew a bit too much, that it was all more convenient than it should be. But, I also have to admit to knowing a couple people in real life that can spout out facts and information about things that I, despite graduating from a College of Engineering, see no reason to ever know. There are some personalities in this world that just absorb information and are quite intrigued in the inner workings of basically everything. Christopher must be one of those people because he seems to know an awful lot. Perhaps it’s that personality trait that caused him to land in the middle of this strange world.

I think this was a pretty strong debut. I really enjoyed the premise and the way magic and status is handled. Magic with a real cost! At times things seemed a bit easy for our protagonist, but, hey, I liked the rest of it enough I can easily overlook that. When it comes down to it, Sword of the Bright Lady was an enjoyable and intriguing read with an ending that has me interested and asking more questions until I get the chance to read the next one. ( )