Back into the Archive: The Sword and the Satchel

 

The Sword and the Satchel, by Elizabeth H. Boyer

Ballantine Books, 1980 - 312 pages

Kilgore had long dreamed of great adventures and magic. But when he alone proved able to draw the ‎magic sword Kildurin he found himself embroiled in more than he had wanted. With the aid of a ‎crotchety old wizard [Skanderberg] he set out for the far north across lands beset with trolls, frost giants, dark elves, ‎and all the minions of dark sorcery. It was his duty to find and destroy the evil wizard Surt, who was ‎threatening to bring never-ending darkness and eternal winter to the land of Skarpsey. If he could ‎survive the perils of the journey, he would then have to face Surt alone - one man and his sword ‎against the might of the greatest wizard and all his cohorts. And there was a further problem. There ‎had been twenty previous attempts to end the life of Surt, and all had failed. Surt, it seemed, could ‎not be killed!‎ - Google Books.

Elizabeth Hall Boyer (born 1952) is an American fantasy author who produced books in the 1980s and early 1990s. Boyer studied English literature and Scandinavian mythology at Brigham Young University. She lives on a farm near Atlanta and no longer writes. – Wikipedia.

I started reading Elizabeth H. Boyer when I was still in high school. Well, I read this first book, The Sword and the Satchel. It was an odd, not unpleasing combination of Norse mythology and T. H. White’s The Sword in the Stone. This is the original cover I had. You can see that, although it is not super-great, it is superior to the cropped cover that I received. It’s what I was kind of hoping for, but for reading purposes the other is just fine.

For a while I kept buying Boyer books, just to keep up in case I ever wanted to read them. But somehow, I never did. I could not tell you right now the story of any of the other books, though their covers were interesting enough. You can see them elsewhere in the Niche.

World of the Alfar

1.    The Sword and the Satchel (1980)

2.    The Elves and the Otterskin (1981)

3.    The Thrall and the Dragon's Heart (1982)

4.    The Wizard and the Warlord (1983)

I also had a fifth book, The Troll’s Grindstone (1986), which, as I was not paying attention by then, I never realized was the start of another series, Wizard’s War.

I’ve never really missed them since selling them off, but lately (nostalgia is upon me) I’ve been thinking about that first book and getting the vague, nagging urge to look at it again. And so I ordered it; even with shipping, it was under $10. Probably a foolish and unnecessary buy, but I never claimed to be 100% rational. It's weird to think it came out only about seven years after The Mystery in Dracula's Castle, and how different my life was by then. And it's been 44 years since The Sword and the Satchel. I know, I'm suffering from Since Syndrome.