The Misenchanted Sword

The Misenchanted Sword is Lawrence Watt-Evans' all-time bestseller. (As witness the name of his homepage.) And no wonder: it's a clever, well-told light fantasy novel.

Valder is a scout for the army of Ethshar, which is fighting an endless war with the Evil Empire of the north. He gets cut off behind enemy lines, hides in the shack of a hermit who turns out to be an eccentric wizard, and gets his sword enchanted by the grumpy old man so that he stands a chance of making it back home.

The fact that the hermit is grumpy, and arguable insane, and working with secondhand components, leads to the misenchantment of the title. Valder is left with a magic sword, "Wirikidor," that cannot lose a fight, which is obviously useful (indeed, he does make it home); but there are drawbacks.

Wirikidor is enchanted to protect his life, so he's basically unkillable by anything else. He's not immune to pain, disease, disfigurement, etc.: he just can't die until the spell is used up. And that will happen on the one hundredth killing- at that point, the sword will turn on Valder and kill him.


The first charm of the book is probably Valder- he's a likeable low fantasy hero, which is to say that he's not much of a hero at all. He just wants to survive the war, retire to find a civilian career and have a happy, uneventful life. When Wirikidor falls into his life, he doesn't want to become a war hero, he just wonders how he can be rid of it. (He can't.)

The second part of the book's appeal is its clear approach to magic. We're given pocket summaries that seem to make sense and delineate what's possible, which is essential since the whole plot is about Valder's dilemma with the sword. It approaches the status of a pure logic puzzle: if the unbreakable spell makes him unkillable, but still prone to the degenerations of extreme old age, then what can he do about it?

The ending, in terms of logic, is a copout; but by the time I got there I liked Valder enough that it didn't bother me.