Book Review: Sword of the Bright Lady by M.C. Planck
Sword of the Bright Lady by M.C. Planck
Genre: Fantasy
Series: Book 1 of World of Prime
Publisher: Pyr (September 9, 2014)
Author Information: Website
Mogsy’s Rating: 3 of 5 stars
Many will probably read Sword of the Bright Lady and think what a peculiar world our protagonist Christopher Sinclair has landed in, with all these funny magical rules and strange way of doing things. On the other hand, if you’re a gamer, then you just might see things a bit differently, and a lot of the elements will have that persistent, familiar ring.
As already pointed out by many reviewers, the world of this book feels reminiscent of a video game. For example, gaining ranks and becoming more powerful by defeating your enemies, then plundering their bodies for loot is like the foundation of any role-playing game. Fortifying your base, allocating your resources, and delegating responsibilities to your minions while arming your fighters and supplying your crafters to make sure they churn out raw materials and products for the war effort also happens to be essential for strategy games. And the golden rule of battles and duels in Sword of the Bright Lady – that is, fight and deplete your opponent’s tael before they deplete yours – sounds extraordinary like the tongue-in-cheek “advice” I used to tell my raid group back when I was leading 25-mans in World of Warcraft: “Let’s all try and get the boss’ hit points to zero before he gets our hit points to zero, please.”
There are many more examples like this, and as the author had confirmed in a comment on another blogger’s review that he had intended to write a book exploring what it would feel like to be an actual person in the games we play, I had a lot of fun spotting the similarities and wondering what aspects might actually be subtle references to gaming. The concept itself is REALLY cool. The book begins with Christopher waking up in a strange, new world with no memory of how he got there. How many game narrative start off just like that? He gets drafted into an eternal war (as an online gamer, a war that goes on forever was one of those “AHA!” moments for me, because we all know in an MMO you can never truly “win”) by serving as a priest of the Bright Lady, joining the ranks of her followers who can heal wounds by using their magic and, for the right price, resurrect the dead (another “AHA!”) But then, drawn by the opportunity to return home to his own world, Christopher goes and pledges himself to the god of war, which sets off a series of unpredictable and violent events.
By all rights, I should have fallen in love with Sword of the Bright Lady. After all, I usually find myself drawn to any story with a gaming angle, no matter how tenuous the link. However, in the end “love” might be too powerful a word to describe how I felt about the book, though I did have fun and enjoyed reading it quite a bit. There were just a few things that added up to keep me from embracing this one completely.
Firstly, something about Christopher just doesn’t sit right with me. While I don’t pretend to be an expert on how a person would react when waking up to an unfamiliar world surrounded by strangers, still, Christopher’s behavior and many of his decisions and actions just didn’t seem realistic or normal to me. And while he clearly didn’t know about all the ways of this new place, he did seem to know quite a lot – perhaps too much to be believable. And though I was aware of the nature of this fantasy world, the people took to Christopher’s new ideas and projects much too easily, with not much fuss or resistance at all, which also didn’t feel very believable to me.
This segues perfectly into my second point, which is that the whole premise of this novel feeling like it’s hovering in this awkward place between trying to convey the realism and authenticity of this world but at the same time negating a lot of that by throwing in some pretty outlandish situations that make the story feel almost satirical. The book feels like it wants it both ways, which is a difficult balance to strike. I’m not sure I liked this “in between” feeling, and in fact if Christopher’s experience is meant to be a parody of sorts of what it might feel like to be a person in a video game – which is quite an ingenious and unique idea – I’d actually have liked to see the author carry that premise even further.
To sum it all up, I think there are a couple of missed opportunities to make this book stand out more, which for me is the only factor holding it back from being a truly excellent read. But I can’t deny there are some fascinating ideas in here, and overall it’s a very strong novel from author M.C. Planck.
A review copy of this book was provided to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. My thanks to Pyr Books!
The BiblioSanctum 
Ah too bad you had a problem with the main character… but at the same time I’m curious about the world and the video games thing because I haven’t read something like that yet.
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It’s a very interesting premise, just a little shaky on the execution.
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I like the notion of using gaming tropes as plot points. Too bad it didn’t seem to pan out for you.
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Agreed, the use of gaming tropes was pretty awesome.
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Concept sounds awesome, and reading your review, I am somewhat intrigued.
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I hope if you check it out that you’ll enjoy it 🙂
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Hmm, not exactly a glowing review, but the first positive one I’ve really seen. I shall keep this on the to-be-read pile for a while longer. 🙂
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It’s not a bad book! Probably for a niche audience though.
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Yeah, this is one I figured would get mixed reviews. I read it when I was in a more forgiving mood than I sometimes am. All of Christopher’s ingenious engineering tricks were …. hmmmm…. “convenient”. But while this could kill a book for me, I still enjoyed it.
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I have a feeling Christopher’s ingenuity was a part of the whole video game idea and premise, but it doesn’t really come through.
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This does sound like an awesome idea, but then I think back to Ready Player One, which was an amazing book, and I can’t imagine any other “I’m in a video game” books doing as good a job. Probably won’t read this.
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Yeah, I prefer books like Ready Player One which were more over-the-top and the video game connection was a lot more in our faces.
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Maybe if there had been an attempt to be more ‘over the top’ with it rather than actually trying to make my buy in I could gone along with it better.
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I feel the same way. Make it very clearly a satire and I think I would enjoyed it even more.
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I’m not sure how I feel about a video game book. On one hand spotting the references would be cool, but on the other how can that work in a book? I understand what you mean, I don’t like books where everything is too conveniently easy for the hero.
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I think the references were just too subtle. If this was marketed as a character-in-a-world-like-a-video-game book and the story went all the way with it, it might have been received better.
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Well..I agree with everything 🙂
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