In November we're publishing a BIG bind-up of Garth Nix's Old Kingdom Chronicles (Sabriel, Lirael & Abhorsen). Over 1400 pages of epic fantasy goodness.The bind-up will be completely awesome, but 1400 typeset A4 pages do tend to clog up one's desk. When you're checking corrections, that's 2800 pages right there - pretty soon the piles are out of control, then the spine width is off the charts and you have to send it to the printer in a cardboard box.
Happily, as well as having desks full of paper, we've also had heads full of swords, and bells, and the Dead, and Charter Marks (and, you know, the ever-alluring URST between Sabriel and Touchstone and then Lirael and Nick. *swoons*)
This much more pleasurable kind of clogging got us thinking about swords in general. So we listed the famous swords we knew - just, you know, for fun. (This House gets nerdier by the moment. Hurrah!)
Of course we began with Lirael's sword Nehima, then we thought of:
Rhindon
Excalibur
Sting
Glamdring
and The Elder Wand (Controversial, not strictly a 'sword', clearly, but surely it takes the place a sword would occupy in another sort of fantasy?)
With the exception of Nehima and Mr Pointy, these swords are all wielded by men.
Also, doesn't all this talk about swords just make you want to watch this...?
Most feisty and excellent of heroines, Wynter Moorehawke sure knows how to use a sharp and pointy object, but we don't think she names her dagger. (Right, Celine?) And Susan Pevensie is a mean archer - but it's only Peter's sword that has a name.
Does anyone know of other famous pointy objects, especially swords belonging to women?
Does anyone know of other famous pointy objects, especially swords belonging to women?
Also, doesn't all this talk about swords just make you want to watch this...?
Ahhh that's better. Carry on.
5 comments:
*claps hands and squeals* The Princess Bride! Oh it took me so long to appreciate you, now you are my friend forever.
Wynter most certainly would not name her knife, she's terribly unsentimental that way! Being a craftsman and pernickety about tools, she would probably be quite strict about calling the weapons by thier 'proper' names, though. So a 'dagger' is a 'dagger' not a 'knife' Razi's sword is a 'falchion' and Christopher's belt-knife is a 'katar'.
It comes from years of Lorcan making her organise her tools properly – Imagine his horror if she packed the adzes in with the files! Sheesh! That kind of thing wears off on you after a while, you know :0D
PS: My husband will die when I tell him about the Garth Nix big-bind!
Does anyone know if 'Nicholas Sayre and the Creature in the Case,' will be included in this?
Hi Rachel - Yes! 'Nicholas Sayre and the Creature in the Case' will be in the bind-up.
Celine - Very interesting! Hooray for unsentimental (about some things ;-)) Wynter! Also, it feels to me as if Lorcan wouldn't have let her get away with romanticising war and death and pain in that way.
Most of the names mentioned in the clip are authors of actual sixteenth- and seventeenth-century fencing treatises (I know; I've read some of them - or tried to).
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