Blue Sword - Softcover

Robin McKinley

4.21

60,992 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141311886 ISBN 13: 9780141311883

Publisher: Penguin Putnam~trade, 2001

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Harry Crewe is an orphan girl who comes to live in Damar, the desert country shared by the Homelanders and the secretive, magical Hillfolk. Her life is quiet and ordinary-until the night she is kidnapped by Corlath, the Hillfolk King, who takes her deep into the desert. She does not know the Hillfolk language; she does not know why she has been chosen. But Corlath does. Harry is to be trained in the arts of war until she is a match for any of his men. Does she have the courage to accept her true fate?

"McKinley's spare and eloquent prose is sheer delight... a compelling portrait of the vibrant, wryly humorous Harry." -School Library Journal, starred review

"This is a zesty, romantic heroic...." -Booklist, starred review

Awards:

( A 1983 Newbery Honor Book
( An ALA Notable Book
( An ALA Best Book for Young Adults

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From the Back Cover:

When Harry Crewe's father dies, she leaves her Homeland to travel east, to Istan, the last outpost of the Homelander empire, where her elder brother is stationed.

Harry is drawn to the bleak landscape of the northeast frontier, so unlike the green hills of her Homeland. The desert she stares across was once a part of the great kingdom of Damar, before the Homelanders came from over the seas. Harry wishes she might cross the sands and climb the dark mountains where no Homelander has ever set foot, where the last of the old Damarians, the Free Hillfolk, still live. She hears stories that the Free Hillfolk possess strange powers -- that they work magic -- that it is because of this that they remain free of the Homelander sway.

When the king of the Free Hillfolk comes to Istan to ask that the Homelanders and the Hillfolk set their enmity aside to fight a common foe, the Homelanders are reluctant to trust his word, and even more reluctant to believe his tales of the Northerners: that they are demonkind, not human.

Harry's destiny lies in the far mountains that she once wished to climb, and she will ride to the battle with the North in the Hill-king's army, bearing the Blue Sword, Gonturan, the chiefest treasure of the Hill-king's house and the subject of many legends of magic and mystery.

About the Author:

Robin McKinley is a New York Times bestselling author who has won numerous awards and citations for her writing. She lives in England with her husband, author Peter Dickinson.

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