The Fire Sword, The Crystal Sword, The Rainbow Sword, and The Sea Sword are magical swords representing the four elements. Classic high fantasy about our heroes on a quest to save the land right out of Campbell. However, these books are from the 1980s and are also clearly second-wave feminist speculative fiction centered around gender dynamics grounded in mythology. Each stands alone, but they function best as a set. So Light vs Dark and battle of the sexes and Freudian issues with parents and journeys of self-discovery.

Each magic sword has a magic sheath made from the skin of the Earth Serpent, the only thing strong enough to contain the power of the swords. And sword and sheath are used as literal metaphors (is that an oxymoron?) for mystical union of man and woman. So each book is about bringing magical artifacts and magical people together into unbreakable union. Yadda yadda. All very heteronormative and reifying plenty of gender stereotypes.

The Rainbow Sword features Geoffrey, son of Dylan and Aenor (The Crystal Sword). He's a student in Venice who races home to find his mother dying and father grief-stricken and meets his aunt Rowena, who has written a history of their family's exploits. His parents didn't really talk about their deeds or their contact with the divine, so he is unprepared for the goddess of poppies to appear and send him on a quest to Byzantium in search of a healing elixir. He doesn't quite realize she's a goddess, and he's overcome with grief and envy of his parents' closeness (very Freudian), so he steals a horse, food, money, and his aunt's book (how else is he going to understand what the hell is going on) to seek adventure and save his mother (he thinks).

This time it's the Holy Land, the Levant, that is the scene for immortal struggle. Geoffrey spends the whole time maundering about what a coward he is, how unlike his dad he is, how he's relied on logic and reason yet divine visitations are challenging his understanding of the world. He's not a warrior like his father, nor a singer like his mother. But he plays a mean flute and can feel the music of his lineage in his bones. Geoffrey doesn't make it to Byzantium because he returns to Venice to arrange transportation and gets stuck when the Doge shuts down maritime travel. He befriends Hermes (though of course at first he doesn't realize he's had another encounter with the divine), who helps him get out of the city and on the road. He eventually figures out the goddess of poppies is Persephone, and it's all about Hellenic myths this time.

But what about the sword, and the girl? The scenes alternate primarily between Geoffrey and Helene, the daughter of Hiram, one of the powerful Byzantine mages whose magics have kept the city safe for centuries. She's got a massive inferiority complex and a lot of rage because her father hates her for not being a boy, even though she does her best to be a boy, pursuing the arts of war and studying magic. Byzantium is under attack by an invading army, and Helene flees in the chaos with an artifact from her father that turns out to be effectively a light saber. Just some sort of cross shape until she empowers it (there's a sexual component to this--the book is not subtle), and then it develops an ethereal and ultimately material blade. Turns out she's had a relationship with an unnamed goddess since she was a child who guides and aids her on her journey.

Helene hates and fears men, not surprising given how many violent encounters she has: her father wants to use her as a blood sacrifice, then a shapechanging mage captures her, then an Arab mage attempts to seduce/rape her. And Geoffrey thinks he's not man enough for women besides being raped by Maenads and wants nothing to do with sex or women. So here they are, traveling companions who sleep with the sword between them while they build trust and understanding. In addition to Persephone and Hermes, we get Artemis, Aphrodite, Ares, and Dionysius at least mentioned if not all showing up in scenes.

But wait, there's more. Other chapters feature the viewpoint of Michael ben Avi and his twin brother Jacob, who are rivals in leading their people under siege and as refugees from the fall of Jerusalem (called Salem in this book). Is one of them destined to be the king who ultimately receives the magic sword and defeats Darkness?

So this third book is unlike the previous two (The Fire Sword and The Crystal Sword). It moves out of northern Europe into the eastern Mediterranean. And the book opens with a disclaimer that this alternate timeline had no Mohammed, no Islam, no Crusades, no religious schism and hence no Greek Orthodox church. That's a little bit of a red flag for me. Like, this is book 3 in a series already well established as an alternate historical fantasy. Why signpost No Muslims Here so loudly? Islamophobia maybe?

And then we get to these Jewish potential kings. Not that they're ever called that. But the chapter that introduces Michael ben Avi shows him abandoning his extremely pregnant wife Rebecca to pursue his holy mission as the Messiah, and thinking of her as nagging and complaining. And focused on the adulation of his followers and the power struggle with his twin brother. When Geoffrey and Helene see him, he's described as having "huge doe-like eyes rimmed with ebony lashes, wavy black hair, pronounced nose, and a square black beard" and is later described him as rubbing his hands together. The anti-semitism is not subtle. That along with his greed for the sword and attempted coercion and general zealotry.

Adrienne Martine-Barnes shifts her setting but makes it a misogynistic, violent place full of dangerous dark men, unnamed nomadic peoples, invasions from the east, some of which is Darkness, and some apparently just brown people on a rampage. The racism is strong in this book. Not like those things aren't present in Albion and Franconia (the settings of the earlier books), but she really kicked it up a lot more notches and made it clear she thought it was a cultural problem, not just an asshole/Darkness problem. ( )