2019 read #6: The Wizard and the Warlord by Elizabeth Boyer.

The Wizard and the Warlord by Elizabeth Boyer
279 pages
Published 1983
Read from February 14 to February 27
Rating: 1.5 out of 5

I bought this book at a sad little used book shop that an old man had established in the book-stuffed emptiness of his own home. He only accepted cash, and I only had enough cash for one purchase. It was between this and an old edition of Samuel R. Delany's Babel-17. I chose this one because you can buy Babel-17 pretty much any time you want, but I'd never even heard of this book, so you might as well go with the one you don't know, right?

What a slog this turned out to be.

A generic sword-and-sorcery hack-and-slash centered on an orphaned young man's search for the father he never knew, the best that can be said for The Wizard and the Warlord is its setting, an elven land based on Scandinavia and its folklore. Boyer's Alfar are indistinguishable from her human characters in temperament and behavior, and their realm is pretty much identical to the human realm our Sigurd must leave behind, but I enjoyed the rocky fells, the winters of darkness and the summers of midnight sun, the trolls and three-headed horse-bears.

The rest of the book, by contrast... oof.

Sigurd is perhaps the stupidest character I have ever encountered in a work of fiction. I'm not referring to the myriad cliches surrounding his origin or his quest, though those cringe-inducing enough. I'm referring to his capacity for decision-making and navigating the world around him. Every protagonist in this type of story seemingly must begin in a position of naive ignorance and boneheadedness, but Sigurd is MAGA-hat-wearing levels of stupid. And while other chosen-one lost sons eventually wise up with experience and take a more thoughtful approach to their predicaments, Sigurd doubles and triples down on his bad choices. The first Alfar he meets is so obviously Sigurd's father that I could only read on in wry disbelief as Sigurd swore everlasting enmity against him; the unctuous wizard, by contrast, wins Sigurd's undying trust despite repeatedly betraying him and cursing him with magic and trying to wrest Sigurd's own powers away from him. It isn't until page 260 (out of 279) that Sigurd himself realizes, "It seemed to him as he lay helplessly bleeding to death... that he [Sigurd] had betrayed every person he ought to have trusted and he had allowed his enemies to flatter and deceive him with ridiculous ease."

Yeah, no shit, honey.

Sadly, Sigurd does not helplessly bleed to death, which would have been a suitable fate for him. He gets rescued, and having learned and grown at last, goes off with his true friends to reunite with his father. Along the way our heroes casually commit genocide against the entire population of dark elves for the crimes of one warlord. So yay! Job well done, guys. Way to be a bunch of murderhobos.

Actually, that's a good way to describe this book: Imagine that That Guy in your D&D group (every D&D group has one!) who wants to have a secret, dark, gritty backstory that only the DM knows, and who loudly objects when anyone else in the party does anything silly or fun or enjoyable with their characters, got to write down their character's life story exactly as they imagined it. That's this book.

And apparently there are two other books set in this same world. Life's too short to read more than one book like this, alas.