★★★★☆ High Fantasy and ordinary people

The Demon Sword Asperides

Sarah Jean Horwitz

Sarah Jean Horwitz's books involve ordinary people in High Fantasy. So what?, you're thinking. Doesn't everyone do that? After all, The Chronicles of Narnia are all about the Pevensie children, and The Lord of the Rings is about beer- and breakfast-loving Hobbits, who are clearly just European farmers in disguise.

But none of these really convince you (or me, at least), that this story is happening to someone like you -- someone who was perhaps an insecure teenager, someone who has allergies, someone who doesn't know quite how they're supposed to act at a party, someone who would really rather visit a library than a party but may be embarrassed to admit it... The reason is that in most fantasy the characters may start out ordinary, but they don't stay that way. By the time you get to the end they have become as high-falutin as High King Peter of Narnia.

Horwitz evades this trap. There are thirteen-year-old Nack, twelve-year-old Therin, and Cleoline --

The dark sorceress Cleoline was eighteen years old, very good at magic, and very, very bored—three things that most people would agree are a dangerous combination.

-- not to mention that she is the daughter of sheep-farmers and has a wool allergy. And then there is two-thousand-year-old Asperides, a demon sword who likes to hang out in bars and lurk in dark corners with a drink which, being a sword, he can't drink. So far, so weird, right? But actually, they aren't! Weird, that is. Well, they are a little, the way you're weird, and each of your friends is. They feel like the real people around you. OK, maybe none of your friends are swords, or even sorceresses, but everyone is a little off-center. Nack and Therin and Cleoline feel like the real people around you -- when the story starts AND when it ends.

Now, you might be thinking that this doesn't allow for character growth. But it does! Nack is an thirteen-year-old boy, but he is a much bigger person when the story ends than when it begins. He has fought a battle and won, mostly. He's still an ordinary boy -- not a king of anything. He still feels like he could be someone you know well, someone you would be proud to know.

I should mention, since this is a children's book, that the ending is, in one way, sad. Asperides does not survive the final battle.

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