The Sword of the Lady

S. M. Stirling continues his change saga with The Sword of the Lady. Stirling has been on an aggressive release schedule for the past several years, churning through the aftermath of the disappearance of the population of the island of Nantucket and the resulting changes to the men and women left behind. Set a generation after The Protector’s War, Stirling has used the past couple of books to pass the torch of leadership to those who born immediately after the change.

First and foremost, the rules of physics have fundamentally changed. Gunpowder doesn’t work quite right; steam doesn’t build enough pressure to drive engines. Internal combustion doesn’t work. In short, the basic physical chemistry of the universe changed overnight, leaving those left behind reliant on muscle power and animal power to accomplish their tasks.

Against this backdrop, young Rudi MacKenzie, scion of a clan of Wiccans who survived and thrived after the change, embarks on a quest to visit Nantucket. He has received visions leading him to a mystical sword, but Stirling leaves room for the reader to interpret whether these visions comes from God (or the gods), if they are being planted by extra-terrestrials, or if they are figments of Rudi’s imagination. There seems to be real power in worship of every form, whether it is the simple faith of a catholic warrior knight (Father Ignatius), or a complicated belief in the Norse pantheon.

Every hero on a quest must also have an enemy–in this case, it is the Church Universal and Triumphant, which is revealed in bits and pieces over the course of the novels. The “adepts” of the church (essentially warrior mages?) have power that looks and feels magical within the context of the world, but the system by which it works has not been explained thoroughly enough for me to grasp if it truly is supernatural, or if it’s an application of something more mundane. Their characterization is the weakest part of the narrative. Their motivations aren’t terribly clear, and their brief point-of-view chapters are somewhat one dimensional. I could use more information about this aspect of Stirling’s world, so I’ll have to wait and see if he answers the questions I have in the next book.

Rudi and his friends are hunted and harried by soldiers of the CUT as they try frantically to reach their goal. Rife with action sequences, Stirling takes the reader on a ride through the wasteland of a post-change America. Our mighty civilization has fallen to ignorance, tyranny, and cannibalism, but out of it all, a few small communities of men and women have begun to thrive. These are the seeds of the future, and the detail provided for each unexpected community of friends is both poignant and melancholy. Whether intentionally or not, Stirling forces us to ask difficult questions  about our existence and our potential survival in the face of disaster. In his view, fewer than ten percent of us have what it takes to pull through, and of those ten percent, it is much easier to forget our thin veneer of liberty and civilization in order to survive.

This is grim, existential, and difficult to put down.