A Sword of Bronze and Ashes by Anna Smith Spark

(Flame Tree Press, 2023)

Reviewed by Steven French

This is one of those rare novels in which style and content are skilfully brought together in a way that leaves the reader (or at least, this reader) enthralled by both the story itself and the manner of its execution. It begins with Kanda, a mother and farmer’s wife who, one summer’s morning, while walking down to the water meadow to call the cows in for milking, spots a body floating down the river. Realising immediately what that means, she desperately tries to save her family from the terror that she knows is coming, revealing, as she does so, that in another life she was none other than Ikandera Thygethyn, the greatest of the Six Swords of the Hall of Roven. Together these golden and glorious knights would ride out, repeatedly, from that place of peace and beauty and light, to challenge the darkness, to fight the good fight, and to slaughter their enemies, again and again and again. This is not just a tale about a mighty warrior, however, taking up her sword one last time to protect those she loves. It’s also about facing up to the past, it’s about the hope for redemption and whether that hope can ever be truly fulfilled. It’s about the lies that parents have to tell their children to protect them and about how, inevitably, those lies will twist and strain and maybe even break the bonds between family members. And above all it’s about the contrast between the mythic and the mundane and about which of the two, in truth, offers the greater challenges and the richer prizes to be gained.

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Review from BSFA Review 22 - Download your copy here.