Sword-Maker

In this third book in her series, sword-dancer Tiger has abandoned the northern academy of sword-dancing Staal-Ysta after a sword-dance to the death engineered between Tiger and Del turned lethal. He has vowed to find the unseen enemy who commands the pack of magical hounds that tried to steal first Del's jivatma and then Tiger's new blade. Certain that Del is dead, Tiger faces an uncertain future alone. But when Del appears in the night, Tiger's anger over her willingness to enslave him cannot be overcome. Del reluctantly joins Tiger in his quest for the source of the killer hounds. When their foe turns out to be a sorcerer named Chosa Dei imprisoned in a mountain, the skeptical Tiger is ill-equipped to deal with the powerful magician. In the end, Tiger's battle with Chosa leaves Tiger with a sorcerer trapped in Tiger's magical sword, Samiel. Tiger and Del must return to the desert south so that Tiger can seek out Chosa Dei's brother who may know how to rid Tiger's sword of the powerful, dangerous magician. In the South, Del must also seek her revenge by finding and killing the raider, Ajani who murdered Del's family. With each book in the Del and Tiger series, the relationships and plot become deeper and richer. Del must regain the humanity she has cast away in her quest for justice. Tiger is seeking the truth to his own identity. Growing up as an unnamed slave, without parents or family, Tiger created himself as a sword-dancer. Now, for the first time, he is questioning who his parents really were, where he came from; how he ended up with the Salset. The growth of Tiger and Del is a critical component to the success and the appeal of the series. Roberson delivers not only wonderful action sequences, but also nuanced characters who suffer the consequences of their decisions.

Roberson's five-volume series seems to be structured much like a Shakespearean play, and in this, which is Act Three, things rise to a peak. We find Tiger, the one-time slave turned sword-dancer, on his way back to his Southron homeland with his new jivatma (blooding-blade, a magical named sword) and the rank of kaidin (teacher of swordsmanship, in the Northern tradition), recovering from a nearly-fatal wound taken in his dance with Del, the Northern swordswoman who had become first his partner, then his lover--the woman he's sure died from the wound he gave her. Before too long, however, he and we both learn that Del is alive, and seeking to rejoin him; penitent at having "used" him in her attempt to get to know her daughter, she still needs him as a sparring mate if she's to recover her condition and "end her song"--kill the bandit Ajani who destroyed her family. Del and Tiger's journey leads them first to a village being harried by the "hounds" Tiger has sworn to destroy--magic-made animals created by the legendary centuries-old sorcerer Chosa Dei, whom Tiger kills, taking his spirit into his sword in the process--and from there to the deserted Border city of Iskandar, where the long-prophesied jhihadi, or messiah, is shortly expected to appear. There, in a literally whirlwind climax, they learn that the jhihadi is Ajani, and his Oracle is Del's younger brother Jamail, the slave-lover of a Southron desert chief. Robeson maintains a pace that increases so gradually you almost don't notice what she's doing, yet holds your interest through over 400 pages of story. She also strews a few red herrings about the plot--I was convinced that Ajani would turn out to have found a way, not only to re-quench his jivatma, but to retain all the power each killing had given it, and Tiger is given news that convinces him Jamail is dead. Unlike many fantasists, she also gives thought to the inevitable results of a long career as a warrior: Tiger, at 36 or so, is beginning to feel his age, and actually entertains dreams of what it will be like to settle down on the domain he's promised if he wins the dance that will determine whether the tanzeers (desert princes) and nomad tribes will go to war or not. Del is equally human, even though she's sure her obsession with revenge has turned her into something else; her very doubts make it plain that she's not as far gone as she thinks she is. Cultural background about both Del's Northern people and Tiger's Southrons is subtly and liberally provided, and the Borderer family of Adara, Cipriana, and Massou from the previous volume, with the "horse-speaker" Garrod, makes a return appearance. The book would be improved by a map of Tiger and Del's world, and I would have liked a little more explanation of how Tiger failed to know that Del had survived their duel, but it's a well-written and skillfully-plotted tale of love, revenge, politics, magic, and the human potential.

This is the story of a woman to be reconed with! The character, Del, is a woman I would love to be, but could never be. She is amazing, and so is her tale. Jennifer Roberson spun a tale that I still dream about.

This is a pretty good book for people who like to read about sword-fights,romances,and magic. It is a slow story at the beginning and then comes up to speed about halfway through the book. Near the end is when I really got hooked on to the book and it started to get me thinking about what I had read. The reason that I enjoyed this book is simple, it let me find out what had happened in the prvious books. This is the first book of the series that I had read and it was easy to find out what had happened in the previous books. It gave information on what the past had been like for the characters and how different their worlds had been while growing up. I would recommend this book simply because it is an awesome gift to give a child that has an interest in fighting and likes to read about magic.