The Traitor’s Sword by Amanda Hemingway
publisher: Harper Collins
As you may have noticed in the past I do enjoy Sci-fi and Fantasy novels. Linda knows this as well. So for Christmas she bought me a wide selection of books. One of them is called “The Traitor’s Sword.” She did not know this at the time that the story is a trilogy, a set of three books, and that “The Traitor’s Sword” was the second in the series. It didn’t take me long to figure out that there must have been a previous book and this one was later in the series. Normally I would just set the book aside until I got the first and then read them in order. First though, I wanted to read enough to tell me if I wanted the series or not.
I read the first chapter. This was an introduction to characters. Who they were, what they did, and how the story was generally set up. The premise of the book is that magic is real. The hero, a thirteen year old boy, is the champion of the story. His unique ability is to dream himself into an alternate universe. He can take part in the activities there. In the first book he obtained an artifact. There are two other artifacts that need to be gathered together so that an enchantment can break the curse in one of the alternate universes.
This book is aimed primarily at younger teens. In one part it is to educate the young mind into the possibility that magic is real. The second chapter opens up on practicing magic and the hero taking his own trips. All of this is rather so-so and doesn’t really go very far… so far… into the occult. Of course it is written so that the fertile imagination of young adults can begin to enter into the reality, if only in fantasy. I found the book rather tame and a bit boring. I was wondering as I was coming to the close of chapter two whether I should continue reading the story. Then came the third last paragraph.
The paragraph starts out with the mother thinking back on when she became pregnant. You see, she didn’t have sex with a man but with some form of spiritual being. She talks about Mary, the mother of Jesus, also becoming pregnant by some spiritual being. Understand, the woman was raped by this malevolent(?) spirit and she wonders if Mary also was raped against her will. Then there is a slap at Gods who need to be worshipped. I can just imagine what would be going through the mind of a young girl as she read this passage.
I stopped reading and looked over to Linda. I read out the paragraph. She became very upset and wanted to destroy the book immediately. I told her I would get rid of it after I wrote this book review. It is rare that I don’t finish a book once I start. Even when I read “Mein Kamph” by Hitler I finished the book… but it took many months of returning to it after putting down numerous times. As a story I could finish the book yet on this rare occasion I will simply drop it in the trash.
The titles of the books in this series are: The Green Stone Grail, The Traitor’s Sword, The Poisoned Crown.
I have no opinion of her other books.