A Woman of the Sword by Anna Smith Spark

I would like to thank Francesca from Luna Press Publishing for an advance copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review

Publisher - Luna Press Publishing

Published - Out Now

Price - £13.99 paperback £4.99 Kindle eBook

A Woman of the Sword is an epic fantasy seen through the eyes of an ordinary woman. Lidae is a daughter, a wife, a mother - and a great warrior born to fight. Her sword is hungry for killing, her right hand is red with blood.

War is very much a woman's business. But war is not kind to women. And war is not kind to mothers and their sons.

An awful lot of fantasy is focused on heroes and heroines being heroic. Totally understandable but another strand of the genre explores the warriors for whom time is now passing. From ancient sagas where Kings meet their final battle; to elderly warriors and gunslingers facing just one more battle like in Legend. But we often even then focus on the extraordinary and not explore those who live, fight and die on the orders of the high and mighty. How life and time passes for them is often glossed over. Fortunately in Anna Smith Spark’s excellent and powerful novel A Woman of the Sword we follow a skilled soldier for whom the battlefield has been replaced by family life and yet for whom army life may be calling again one more time.

Lidae at sixteen joined the army that destroyed her city and family as there was nothing left. She found she was a skilled and fierce foot soldier. In her mid-twenties she and her friend married and settled down in a quiet village and had two young boys. Then her husband died of a simple wound infection. Lidae is struggling with grief; a grieving family and working out what to do next. Then her village is under attack and she soon finds it due to the armies she herself fought for. Lidae is torn between a quiet life with those she loves and the life that gives her a purpose she loves having.

This is a spellbinding tale. The first chapter of which shows Lidae in soldier mode fighting a battle. Losing comrades, avenging comrades and lost to fighting with her sword it ends on a poignant cliffhanger. Spark uses trademark poetical yet brutal language to capture the speed and ferocity of the fighting and the strange joy that fighting can cast on those in battle. But this is very much a story of contrasts.

There are constant conflicting images in this story and when we next see Lidae a year years earlier she appears your standard mother of two children trying to keep a grieving family together. Spark builds up the relationship as her two young boys Ryn and Samei who are dealing with death for the first time. Lidae is very capable and can run her farmstead but here the novel makes it relatable the love and frustration a parent can feel at once towards their children who want things, then don’t want things and then accidentally break and lose things. That emotional bond feels just as genuine to Lidae as her love of battle and this story is how she can or cannot navigate these two lives. Very much as most parents find living a life and looking after children is difficult.

This isn’t a story of Lidae as key to a plot and saving the day. All the standard fantasy arcs for rulers are referenced and do happen but in the background. It’s the consequences for Lidae and her family that are being explored and that makes it a very interesting and well handled approach. We see Lidae and family under attack from an invading army and left homeless with many they know around them killed. The attack isn’t for revenge; it’s not even really for greed it’s on orders to make people afraid. Lidae knows this because she too has done this - this is what soldiers are expected to do in her world. This leaves Lidae a stark choice stay with her kids who seem to constantly resent her or perhaps look at the army camping nearby? In grief, being tormented and judged by her children for not keeping them safe (and scarily showing them what she can do with a sword) she goes to seek battle. In various interludes we see Spark captures the bewilderment parents have when not sure what to do to make a child stop crying; to understand you love them and yet can be angry. That sometimes parents want to step back from that 24/7 duty. Importantly you understand Lidae’s choice even if you think you’d not want to.

While we get to know Lidae’s backstory in various quick interludes this isn’t a story of a woman slowly being accepted as a fighter. In this world women can fight and that’s accepted just as much as men. Interesting you can also realise on that basis that men can also be parents too but it’s strange how gendered those views are in so many other books. What follows in the next two acts is the consequences of Lidae’s decision for her and her remaining family who follow her. But as we see this life will change you.

Lidae becomes a veteran in the army. The troops follow and respect her but she isn’t a captain or privy to secret orders. It’s a simple life of battle, pillage, march, sleep, eat and trying not to die. The fun bit is the fighting and the friends made. We get to experience the banter of troops, the day to day light and the realisation these armies are not just soldiers but a supporting crew of families, merchants and people hoping to find things of value after the fight. We see a Lidae relaxed doing what she loves. But also she starts to see soldier life is really more a set of wins and losses, people cross sides as one great King loses to another and then another; for reasons that Lidae slowly realises sound a lot like the excuses her kids have for stealing and fighting from one another. The duality of great royals being squabbling kids, soldiers being professionals and also people with petty dislikes, bad habits and families ground the story a lot.

Which nearly comes to the writing of this story. Anna Smith Spark is a storyteller that makes every word count. A grasp of colour, imagery, emotion and violence that is a work of constant hypnotic violent beauty. Here the peace of family life is contrasted with the blood, thunder and glory of battle. It’s making us as readers experience foot soldier life and if you’re not used to it then a world where dragons, magic, gods and demons all actually being rea and can tread in front of you without warning makes any war strangely unpredictable, terrifying and beautiful. Spark makes Lidae a witness to these things and the lack of explanation for what we see raises the fantastical stakes for us. How can people survive in a world like that and as we see peopel do not. Despite all of these though the key final plot hinges on Lidae finding out her now grown sons have decided to use a battlefield to kill each other for reasons not yet fully clear. A simple scale model of war that two people decide better to fight than talk it out. Has Lidae and her profession inspired this; is it possible to stop when war is declared and can Lidae carry on with the consequences when they happen. This final act is the most powerful because all these little choices experienced along the way has got us to this point; was it inevitable and was there every actually a choice? It’s a sobering question we the readers have to think about. A reminder that for army soldiers this is a living and the available alternatives in these worlds for many are often just death or a very poor and simple life. It’s also a reminder that as a parent you can do all you can and still your children may decide to ignore you and do what you can’t control anymore. Which may be more terrifying than any other battle.

A Woman of the Sword is a tale that very quickly captures the reader and forces us to look and consider life at the truly sharp end of the sword. The people we tend to treat as just stage extras to the main events are now given names, faces and personalities; plus we get to find out what happens to them after what is an adventure for some is really just another day in the life of another. That this is combined with being a parent juggling careers; trying to do the right thing and the constant fear of failure gives the story depth and combined with Spark’s skilled use of language and storytelling it becomes magnificently human yet epic at the same time. Strongly recommended for fantasy fans.